Pulses, crons, and heartbeats

Paid feature: true autonomous heartbeats

On Core, Pro, and higher, heartbeats (pulses) and scheduled crons let agents run real work on a timer—reviewing the task board, updating work, following playbooks—without someone typing a new chat prompt each time. Starter workspaces use chat and the rest of Mission Control; upgrade to enable automation.

This is different from a one-line “ping” in chat: a heartbeat is a full agent turn on your schedule, using the same tools and context as interactive sessions.

Three rhythms

Pulses are focused agent runs—often tied to the task board, a channel interval, or a manual “work the board” action. They nudge agents to review state and act.

Crons are scheduled jobs you define: expression, timezone, payload, and whether delivery should announce results. Use them for recurring reports, reminders, and maintenance turns.

Some teams also use short online checks via the Workspace API for integrations; product heartbeats in the UI are the autonomous pulse/cron runs above.

Default pulses for new agents

• New agents can get a default pulse on a modest cadence so the board does not go stale—tune frequency to your team’s noise tolerance.
• Disable or reshape pulses when an agent is experimental or should only run on demand.

Crons: naming and safety

• Stable job ids matter when jobs are updated over time; follow lowercase, hyphenated identifiers.
• Separate “internal” runs from customer-visible announcements by choosing delivery options deliberately.
• Remember cron expressions are interpreted in the configured timezone—document your workspace default for operators.

When to use what

• Use pulse for opportunistic, context-rich work (board review, channel scan).
• Use cron for clock-driven repetition (daily summary, hourly sync).
• Use heartbeat-style checks when you need a minimal response for monitoring or integration smoke tests.