Heartbeat - Proactive AI Outreach

Heartbeat turns your AI from reactive to proactive. Instead of waiting for users to start a conversation, your agent periodically checks in with each consumer — reviewing their context, memories, and your instructions — and sends a personalized message when something needs attention.

How It Works

On each scheduled run, for each consumer:
  1. Your AI reviews the consumer's memories, recent messages, and your instructions
  2. It uses all available tools (knowledge search, integrations, web browsing, etc.)
  3. If something needs attention → delivers a personalized message
  4. If nothing needs attention → stays silent (no spam)

The key insight: your AI has access to all the same tools as a normal conversation. A heartbeat isn’t just a canned message — it’s a full agent evaluation that can search knowledge, check integrations, and gather real-time data before deciding what to say.

Getting Started

- Has the user been active in the last 7 days?
- Any unresolved questions from their last conversation?
- Is there a relevant product update to share?
- Are there upcoming deadlines they should know about?

Curated Email Recipients

When email is one of your selected channels, you can choose who receives email heartbeats:

• All consumers (default): Every eligible consumer with an email address gets the heartbeat
• Curated list: Only consumers whose emails match your curated list receive email heartbeats

This is useful when you want to target specific users for email outreach while still delivering to all users on other channels like webchat.

To set up a curated list:

1. Select Email as a delivery channel
2. Click Curated list in the toggle that appears
3. Add consumer email addresses to the list

Other selected channels (webchat, WhatsApp, Slack) still reach all eligible consumers regardless of the curated list.

Additional Recipients

Beyond your existing consumers, you can add additional email recipients who receive heartbeat messages even though they haven’t chatted with your app. This is great for:

• Team members who want to stay informed
• Stakeholders who need regular updates
• Email lists for broadcast-style outreach

Additional recipients get a single shared message (no per-user personalization since they have no conversation history or memories).

Slack Channel Broadcasts

If your app has a Slack integration, you can broadcast heartbeat messages directly to Slack channels. This works independently of per-consumer delivery — one LLM call generates the message, and it’s posted to all configured channels.

Testing Heartbeats

Before going live, test your heartbeat configuration:

1. In the Test section, select a consumer (your own account is pinned at the top)
2. Click Run test heartbeat
3. The test runs the full agent loop with real tools and delivers to the resolved channel

Quiet Hours & Anti-Spam

Heartbeat includes several built-in safeguards:

• Active hours: Only send during business hours (e.g., 9 AM - 10 PM in your timezone)
• Interaction recency: Skip consumers who just chatted (default: 60 min cooldown)
• Consecutive OK limit: Stop checking consumers after N consecutive “nothing to say” evaluations (default: 5)
• Deduplication: Don’t send the same message text within 24 hours
• Daily/monthly budget caps: Hard limits on total heartbeat runs per app

How the AI Decides What to Say

When the AI evaluates a consumer and has nothing useful to say, it responds with HEARTBEAT_OK internally. This is silently suppressed — the consumer never sees it. This means:

• No spam: Consumers only hear from your AI when something is genuinely relevant
• Cost efficient: Silent check-ins use tokens but are much cheaper than full outreach messages
• Natural conversations: When a consumer replies to a heartbeat message, it starts a full conversation with complete context and tools

Webhook Delivery

When webhook is selected as a delivery channel, heartbeat output is POSTed as JSON to your configured URL:

{
  "event": "heartbeat.message",
  "applicationId": "...",
  "applicationName": "My App",
  "consumerId": "...",
  "consumer": { "name": "Jane", "email": "jane@example.com" },
  "text": "The heartbeat output message",
  "timestamp": "2026-03-19T15:00:00.000Z"
}

You can optionally set a webhook secret that’s sent in the X-Webhook-Secret header for request verification.

Pricing & Limits

Heartbeat is available on Builder plans and above. Each tier has different limits:

Each heartbeat evaluation uses tokens from your billing credits (billed per-token through Stripe Token Billing). Silent HEARTBEAT_OK check-ins are cheaper than full outreach messages since the AI generates less output.

Tips for Great Heartbeats

• Be specific in your instructions: “Check if the user has unresolved support tickets” is better than “Follow up with the user”
• Use your tools: Design instructions around what your integrations can check — calendar events, knowledge base updates, CRM data
• Start with daily: Begin with a daily schedule and adjust based on the analytics in the Stats section
• Monitor the run history: The Runs tab shows every heartbeat evaluation — check for patterns in skips, failures, and deliveries
• Use a cheaper model: Set a model override (e.g., GPT-4.1 mini) for heartbeat evaluations to reduce cost while maintaining quality