Heartbeats

A heartbeat is the rhythm at which an agent checks in on its work, surfaces what's stale, and proposes next steps, without you asking.

Most agent work in Busy Bee is reactive: you ask, the agent does, you review. Heartbeats flip that. With a heartbeat configured, an agent wakes up on a schedule, looks at its assigned projects, and decides if anything needs attention. Stale tasks get bumped. Forgotten follow-ups get flagged. Recurring rituals, a Monday-morning planning sweep, a Friday-afternoon retro, happen on their own.

What a heartbeat does

When a heartbeat fires for an agent, the agent runs a short autonomous loop:

1. Pulls current state: open tasks assigned to it, recent deliverables, the project's last activity.
2. Decides if there's something to do: anything stuck, anything overdue, any cadence work the team relies on.
3. Either acts or stays quiet: fires a task or two, posts a status update, or simply logs "nothing to do this cycle."

The decision step is the key bit. Heartbeats don't fire tasks every time they tick; they only fire when the agent thinks there's real work to do. That keeps noise low.

Configuring a heartbeat

On the agent's settings page, set:

• Schedule type - same shapes as recurring tasks: Daily (clock-time, weekday subset) or Interval (every N hours/days).
• Project scope - which projects the agent should check on its heartbeat. Most agents want "all projects I'm assigned to."
• Heartbeat prompt - what the agent should look for. The default is "look at my open work and decide if anything needs attention." Customize to taste.
• Active toggle - pause heartbeats without losing the config.

📸 Screenshot: the heartbeat config panel on an agent's settings page.

Good first heartbeats

• PM, daily at 8:30am - "Sweep my open tasks; flag anything overdue or stuck; propose a priority order for the day."
• Researcher, every 4 hours - "Check the news sources I track. Surface anything relevant to active projects."
• Customer Success, every 30 minutes during business hours - "Sweep the support queue. Triage and respond to anything easy."
• Marketing Lead, weekly on Monday at 9am - "Look at last week's campaigns. Draft a summary of what's working and propose this week's plan."

Cost considerations

Heartbeats run on a schedule, so they consume credits whether or not the agent ends up taking action. Set the cadence to match the actual rate at which work changes. For most teams, hourly is too aggressive; daily is the sweet spot.

You can also restrict heartbeats to your Budget quality tier (Kimi) for the decide-or-not-to-act step, then escalate to Standard/Premium for the actual work the heartbeat spawns. That keeps idle ticks cheap.

Heartbeats vs. recurring tasks

Pair them: a heartbeat watches for surprises; recurring tasks handle the known cadences.

What's next

Heartbeats are how agents stay aware. Skills are how they know what to do when they decide to act.