OpenClaw Heartbeat & Cron: Set Up Proactive AI Automation

"An assistant you have to ask is just a tool. An assistant that proactively reaches out — that's a real assistant."

Today's Goal

The Missing Piece

Your assistant has a soul, knows you, reads email, manages calendar, searches the web, runs Skills. But it has one critical limitation: if you don't talk to it, nothing happens.

50 emails piled up. It doesn't check. A meeting starting in 30 minutes. No reminder. Your site went down. No alert.

It's like hiring a capable person who just stands at the door waiting for instructions — if you don't ask, they do nothing. That's not a butler. That's a statue.

Today we solve this.

Heartbeat: Your Assistant's Biological Clock

The heartbeat mechanism sends a signal to your assistant at a regular interval (default: 30 minutes). When it receives the signal, it:

1. Reads the task list in HEARTBEAT.md
2. Runs each check
3. Sends a message if something needs your attention
4. If nothing, quietly returns HEARTBEAT_OK and goes back to sleep

Edit ~/.openclaw/workspace/HEARTBEAT.md to define what it checks each time:

## Check Every Heartbeat
- Gmail: any emails marked important or needing reply
- Calendar: meetings starting within 2 hours

## Check 2-3 Times Daily
- Is my site accessible?
- Any unusual GSC traffic fluctuations?

## Don't Check Unless I Ask
- Weather (not needed proactively)
- Social media (unless I'm @mentioned)

Interval options: 15 min (intense workday), 30 min (default balance), 1 hour (economical/off-hours). Configure via openclaw.json key agents.defaults.heartbeat.every (e.g. "30m", "1h", "15m").

Token cost guide:

• 15 min heartbeat: ~$8-15/month (heavy usage)
• 30 min heartbeat: ~$4-8/month (recommended)
• 1 hour heartbeat: ~$2-4/month (light usage)

Adjust based on your model provider pricing.

If you need to stop proactive checks: openclaw system heartbeat disable / openclaw system heartbeat enable

Heartbeat vs Cron: when to use which →

Verification check: run openclaw system heartbeat last and confirm heartbeat is enabled and reading the rules you just defined in ~/.openclaw/workspace/HEARTBEAT.md.

Minimum Day 6 Setup

This is the smallest working setup worth doing today:

Step 1: Create ~/.openclaw/workspace/HEARTBEAT.md with one rule:

Check Gmail for emails marked important. Notify me if any found.

Enable heartbeat (if not already running):

openclaw system heartbeat enable
openclaw system heartbeat last   # Should show last heartbeat run time

To change the interval: edit openclaw.json and set agents.defaults.heartbeat.every (e.g. "15m", "30m", "1h").

Step 2: Set up one morning briefing cron:

openclaw cron add --name "Morning" --cron "0 8 * * *" \
  --system-event "Send me a morning briefing: important emails + today's calendar."

Step 3: Verify both are registered:

openclaw system heartbeat last
openclaw cron list

Verification check: openclaw system heartbeat last shows heartbeat enabled, and openclaw cron list shows a Morning entry scheduled for 0 8 * * *.

Cron: Precise Scheduling

Heartbeat is for "check every so often." Cron is for exact times:

# Morning briefing at 8am every day
openclaw cron add --name "Morning Briefing" --cron "0 8 * * *" \
  --system-event "Generate morning briefing: important emails, today's calendar, any site anomalies. Compile into one message."

# Weekly report every Monday at 9am
openclaw cron add --name "Weekly Report" --cron "0 9 * * 1" \
  --system-event "Summarize last week: key events, completed tasks, data changes, notable emails."

# Hydration reminder on weekdays
openclaw cron add --name "Break Reminder" --cron "0 10,12,14,16 * * 1-5" \
  --system-event "Remind to get up, move, drink water. If working 2+ hours straight, make it stronger."

Standard cron syntax — same as Linux crontab.

Cron jobs: full syntax reference and examples →

Verification check: run openclaw cron list and confirm each job name, cron expression, and system event match what you intended.

The Three-Layer Memory System

Once your assistant works proactively, it needs to remember what happened. OpenClaw uses three layers:

Layer 1 — Daily logs (~/.openclaw/workspace/memory/YYYY-MM-DD.md) The assistant automatically writes what happened each day: what it checked, what it found, what you asked for, what it learned about your preferences.

Layer 2 — Long-term memory (~/.openclaw/workspace/MEMORY.md) Every few days, it reviews recent daily logs and distills what's worth keeping permanently: your project names, work habits, which emails you always reply to immediately, patterns it's noticed.

Layer 3 — Soul memory (SOUL.md + USER.md) The stable core: who you are, how you like to work. This doesn't change with dates — it defines the baseline everything else builds on.

The compounding effect: after a week, it knows more about your workflow than when you set it up. After a month, it anticipates what you need. The gap between a fresh install and a 6-month-old assistant is almost entirely memory.

Hooks: pre/post action automation →

Verification check: after a day of usage, confirm a daily log exists in ~/.openclaw/workspace/memory/, and review ~/.openclaw/workspace/MEMORY.md or SOUL.md to make sure long-term behavior still reflects how you want the assistant to act.

The Balance: Proactive Without Being Annoying

There's a fine line between useful and spammy.

Batch the unimportant. Important email → notify immediately. Regular email → save for morning briefing. Weather is nice today → no one needs to know.

Respect quiet hours. Write in SOUL.md: no messages 11pm–8am unless urgent. Reduce frequency on weekends.

Rule of thumb: 3–5 proactive messages per day is comfortable for most people. More than that and the value dilutes into noise.

All proactive behaviors are configured in HEARTBEAT.md and Cron — adjustable anytime. If something's too frequent, change the interval. If a check isn't useful, delete it.

Verification check: if you get more than a few low-value notifications in one day, lengthen the heartbeat interval or remove the noisy rule before leaving the setup running overnight.

Common Issues

• Heartbeat fires but no message received: check that your notification channel is still connected, then trigger a simple rule in HEARTBEAT.md that should always produce a message.
• Cron runs at the wrong time: verify the server time zone and confirm your cron expression matches that time zone, not your laptop's local clock.
• Too many notifications in the first day: this usually means your first rules are too broad. Narrow the rule, batch lower-priority updates into the morning briefing, or move heartbeat from 15 minutes to 30 or 60.

What This Looks Like Running

A fully configured Day 6 setup runs like this without you doing anything:

• 8:00am — Morning briefing arrives in Telegram. One message, everything you need to know.
• 10:30am — Heartbeat check found nothing notable. Silent.
• 11:50am — "Meeting in 1 hour: Product Discussion. Found 3 related email threads — want me to prep a brief?"
• 3:00pm — Heartbeat detected your site had a 30% traffic drop. You get an alert.
• 9:00pm — Daily log written. ~/.openclaw/workspace/MEMORY.md updated. Everything it learned today stored for tomorrow.

You didn't open any apps. You didn't ask any questions. It just worked.

That's the point.