Session Heartbeats
نبضات الجلسة Heartbeats
What this page is, and what it holds.
This page covers Session Heartbeats. About 3 minutes to read. A job that runs while you sleep also fails while you sleep. Make it report, and test it by hand first.
A recurring prompt that re-enters your current session whenever it's idle — /heartbeat every 10m Check the deployment.
Outcomes taken from this page, not a template.
- Understand what المهام المجدولة is and when you need it.
- Read the table and take only the row that applies to you.
- Know the common mistake before you hit it.
Jump to the part you need.
Nothing summarised away.
The documentation body below is reproduced from the official source so commands and identifiers stay exact. Each section carries a short note describing what it contains.
/heartbeat gives the current session one recurring instruction. Whenever the session is idle and the interval has elapsed, the prompt fires as a normal user turn — same conversation, same context, same prompt cache.
/heartbeat every 10m Check the deployment and report meaningful changesInspired by Prime-Agent's /heartbeat. The Hermes adaptation keeps the strict message-flow invariants: the heartbeat is injected only between turns (never mid-run), as a plain user-role message.
Heartbeat vs cron: which one do I want?
A lookup table. Do not read it all; find the row that applies to you.
They look similar but serve different jobs:
/heartbeat | hermes cron ↗ | |
|---|---|---|
| Runs in | This conversation — full context, memory of the discussion | A fresh isolated session per tick |
| Survives process restart | State survives (SessionDB); firing resumes next time the session is driven | Yes — fully durable scheduler |
| How many | One per session | Unlimited jobs |
| Best for | "Keep an eye on X in this thread while we work" | Standing jobs, reports, watchdogs, deliveries |
Rule of thumb: if the recurring prompt needs the conversation's context, use /heartbeat. If it's a self-contained job, use cron.
Commands
A lookup table. Do not read it all; find the row that applies to you.
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
/heartbeat every <interval> <prompt> | Set (or replace) the session's heartbeat. Intervals: 90s, 10m, 2h, 1d (minimum 60s). |
/heartbeat or /heartbeat status | Show the heartbeat, its interval, and time to next fire. |
/heartbeat pause | Stop firing without clearing. |
/heartbeat resume | Resume (re-anchors the timer — no instant stale fire). |
/heartbeat clear | Remove the heartbeat. |
/hb is an alias. Works on the CLI and gateway platforms (on Slack, use /hermes heartbeat …).
Behavior details
Explains the idea itself. Read it slowly; the later sections build on it.
- Idle-only. A heartbeat never interrupts a running turn. If the agent is busy when the tick comes due, it fires at the next idle poll.
- Missed ticks coalesce. If the session was busy (or the process wasn't running) through several intervals, you get one heartbeat turn, not a backlog. The timer re-anchors on every fire.
- User messages win. A queued user message always takes priority; the heartbeat waits for the input queue to drain.
- Cache-safe. The injected prompt is an ordinary user message. No system-prompt mutation, no toolset change.
- Persistence. State lives in
SessionDB.state_metakeyed byheartbeat:<session_id>— it survives/resumeand rides across context-compression session rotations. Firing requires the owning process (CLI session or gateway) to be running; for schedules that must survive anything, use cron. - Don't-invent-work guard. The injected prompt tells the agent to reply briefly and stop when nothing meaningful changed, so an idle heartbeat doesn't generate busywork.
Example
Explains the idea itself. Read it slowly; the later sections build on it.
You: /heartbeat every 15m Check whether the CI run for PR #1234 finished; summarize the result when it does
♥ Heartbeat set (every 15m): Check whether the CI run for PR #1234 finished; ...
[15 minutes of you working on other things in the same session]
Hermes: [Heartbeat — recurring instruction, fires every 15m]
💻 gh pr checks 1234 (1.2s)
CI is still running (14/37 checks complete). Nothing to report yet.When the answer stops changing, /heartbeat clear it — or let it keep watch.
2 questions answered by this page alone.
Every option is a real identifier from the Hermes documentation. The wrong ones are real too, just from other pages.