Day 3: Set It Free

Until now, your bot only talks when you talk first. Today you give it a pulse — a heartbeat that wakes it up on a schedule so it can check on things, brief you, and alert you without being asked.

What Is the Heartbeat?

The heartbeat is OpenClaw's autonomous loop. On a configurable interval (every 30 minutes by default), the agent wakes up, reads a file called HEARTBEAT.md, and executes whatever instructions it finds there. Think of it as a cron job that speaks natural language.

The cycle is simple:

1. Timer fires
2. Agent reads ~/.openclaw/workspace/HEARTBEAT.md
3. Agent executes each instruction
4. Agent sends results to your configured channel (Telegram, Discord, etc.)
5. Agent goes back to sleep

No code required — you write plain Markdown.

Your First Heartbeat

Create the heartbeat file:

mkdir -p ~/.openclaw/workspace
nano ~/.openclaw/workspace/HEARTBEAT.md

Paste this starter template:

~/.openclaw/workspace/HEARTBEAT.md

## Every morning at 8am
- Check the weather for my city
- Summarize my unread emails
- List my calendar events for today

Restart the gateway to pick up the new file:

openclaw gateway restart

That's it. Tomorrow morning at 8am, you'll get a briefing without lifting a finger.

tip

Test it now instead of waiting until morning:

openclaw heartbeat --now

This runs one heartbeat cycle immediately so you can see the output.

Heartbeat Configuration

Control how the heartbeat behaves in your config file:

~/.openclaw/openclaw.json

{
  "heartbeat": {
    // How often the heartbeat fires (in minutes)
    "interval": 60,

    // Don't wake up while you're sleeping
    "quiet_hours": {
      "start": "22:00",
      "end": "07:00"
    },

    // Use a cheap model for heartbeat — it runs often
    "model": "google/gemini-2.5-flash"
  }
}

The model override is important. Your main brain might be Claude Sonnet or Opus, but the heartbeat fires repeatedly and doesn't need top-tier reasoning for most checks. See the Model Selection Guide for cheap model options.

Practical Heartbeat Ideas

Copy any of these into your HEARTBEAT.md and adapt to your needs.

Morning Briefing

## Morning briefing (daily at 8am)
- Weather forecast for Berlin
- Top 5 Hacker News stories about AI
- My Google Calendar events for today
- Any unread emails from my VIP contacts

GitHub Repo Monitoring

## GitHub monitor (every heartbeat)
- Check github.com/myorg/myrepo for new issues and PRs since last check
- Summarize any new issues — categorize as bug, feature, or question
- Alert me immediately if CI is failing on main branch

Server Health Check

## Server health (hourly)
- SSH to myserver.com and check disk usage — alert if any partition > 85%
- Check RAM usage — alert if > 90%
- Check uptime — alert if server was recently rebooted
- Verify nginx is running and responding on port 443

Price Monitoring

## Price watch (every 2 hours during market hours)
- Check BTC and ETH prices
- Alert me if BTC moves more than 5% in either direction since last check
- Check if the Sony WH-1000XM6 has dropped below $300 on Amazon

Daily Journal Prompt

## Journal prompt (daily at 9pm)
- Ask me: "What was the most interesting thing that happened today?"
- Ask me: "What's one thing you want to do differently tomorrow?"
- Save my responses to ~/journal/2026-06-08.md (use today's date)

Weekly Summary

## Weekly summary (every Sunday at 6pm)
- Summarize my git commits across all repos this week
- Count how many messages I exchanged with you
- List the top 3 tasks I completed
- Suggest one thing I should focus on next week

Cost Warning

The heartbeat runs every 30 minutes by default. Even with a cheap model, this adds up.

The math: 48 heartbeat runs per day x ~500 tokens per run = ~24,000 tokens/day. At Gemini Flash rates ($0.20/M tokens), that's about $0.15/month — negligible. But with Claude Sonnet at $9/M tokens, the same pattern costs $6.50/month just for heartbeat.

Three ways to keep costs down:

1. Use a cheap model for heartbeat (shown in config above)
2. Increase the interval — 60 minutes instead of 30 cuts costs in half
3. Set quiet hours — no point checking while you sleep

~/.openclaw/openclaw.json

{
  "heartbeat": {
    "interval": 60,
    "model": "ollama/qwen3:14b",  // Free if running locally
    "quiet_hours": {
      "start": "23:00",
      "end": "07:00"
    }
  }
}

Use openclaw stats heartbeat to see what your heartbeat is actually costing you.

Cron Jobs

For tasks that need more precise scheduling than "every N minutes," use openclaw cron. This gives you full cron syntax:

# Run a task at exactly 9:15am on weekdays
openclaw cron add "15 9 * * 1-5" "Check my work email and summarize anything urgent"

# List active cron jobs
openclaw cron list

# Remove a cron job
openclaw cron remove <job-id>

Cron jobs bypass the heartbeat entirely — they fire at the exact time you specify and run the quoted instruction as a one-shot task.

Debugging

If your heartbeat isn't working as expected:

# Dry run — shows what the agent would do without executing anything
openclaw heartbeat --now --dry-run

# Run one heartbeat cycle immediately (actually executes)
openclaw heartbeat --now

# Stream heartbeat logs in real time
openclaw logs --filter heartbeat --follow

# Check heartbeat stats (last run time, token usage, errors)
openclaw stats heartbeat

Common issues:

• Heartbeat not firing: Check that openclaw status shows the gateway running. Restart with openclaw gateway restart.
• No output: Make sure you have a channel configured. The heartbeat sends results to your default channel.
• Wrong timing: Quiet hours might be suppressing runs. Check your config.
• High costs: Switch to a cheaper model or increase the interval. Run openclaw stats heartbeat to see actual spend.

For the full technical details, see the Heartbeat Guide and Heartbeat Architecture.

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Next: Day 4: Supercharge It — install community skills to give your bot new abilities.