Session Heartbeats — Long Tasks Stay Alive

Imagine you’re working with a diligent assistant who doesn’t hover over your shoulder, but every so often, quietly peeks at the thing you asked them to watch — and only speaks up when something actually changes. That’s the everyday reality of /heartbeat: it lets the AI automatically “look back” at a task on a schedule, all within the same conversation.

What Is It?

/heartbeat sets a recurring reminder for your current session. When the conversation is idle and the time is up, the AI sends a message to itself — just like a regular user would. The key detail: it never interrupts an ongoing task. It only slips in during a “breather,” using a normal user message, and it doesn’t alter any system settings.

How Is It Different from Cron?

	/heartbeat	hermes cron
Context	Current conversation — full memory & context	Fresh, isolated session every time
After restart	State saved in DB, resumes later	Fully persistent
Count	One per session	Unlimited
Best for	“Keep an eye on this topic”	Standalone tasks, scheduled reports

Quick rule of thumb: if the reminder depends on the conversation’s backstory, use /heartbeat. If the task is fully independent, use cron.

Core Commands

# Set a heartbeat (check deployment every 10 minutes)
/heartbeat every 10m Check the deployment and report meaningful changes

# View current status
/heartbeat status

# Pause (without deleting)
/heartbeat pause

# Resume (timer restarts, won’t fire immediately)
/heartbeat resume

# Remove completely
/heartbeat clear

/hb is a handy alias. Supported intervals: 90s, 10m, 2h, 1d (minimum 60 seconds).

Thoughtful Little Details

• Only fires when you’re idle — if the AI is busy, the heartbeat waits patiently. No queue-jumping.
• No backlog — if several cycles pass without a trigger, only one message is sent. No pile-up.
• User messages come first — your messages always outrank a heartbeat.
• No busywork — heartbeat messages carry a built-in instruction: “if nothing changed, reply briefly.” No need to fake activity.

A Real-World Example

You: /heartbeat every 15m Check whether the CI run for PR #1234 finished; summarize the result when it does

  ♥ Heartbeat set (every 15m): check CI for PR #1234; summarize when done

[15 minutes later, you’re busy with something else]

Hermes: [heartbeat triggered]
  💻 gh pr checks 1234   (1.2s)
  CI passed ✅ All tests green

Summary & Practical Advice

/heartbeat is like a smart alarm clock for your conversation — it remembers context, respects your rhythm, and only nudges you when it matters. Best use case: “watch while I work” scenarios — waiting for a deployment, monitoring log anomalies, or tracking a discussion’s follow-up. Just remember: if a task is completely independent of the current chat, cron is the safer bet. But if it’s about “staying tuned in to this topic,” the heartbeat is your perfect partner.