openclaw - 💡(How to fix) Fix Feature Request: Heartbeat should only fire when session is idle [1 participants]

Problem

The heartbeat mechanism fires on a fixed interval (e.g. every 5 minutes) regardless of whether the user is actively chatting or not. This means:

• During active conversations, the heartbeat injects a system prompt into the main session, interrupting the user's conversation flow
• The heartbeat always shows up as a message in the chat history
• This makes the agent feel mechanical - one question, one answer, then a heartbeat message appears

Use Case

Users want to use the heartbeat to enable intelligent context follow-up:

• Checking for unfinished tasks
• Remembering what the user asked about earlier
• Proactively continuing research or reminders
• The goal is to overcome the mechanical Q&A pattern

But the current behavior interrupts active sessions, making it unsuitable.

Proposed Solution

Add an option to make heartbeat trigger only when the session is idle/inactive:

Option 1 - Simple flag:

{
  "heartbeat": {
    "every": "5m",
    "idleOnly": true
  }
}

Option 2 - Trigger condition:

{
  "heartbeat": {
    "every": "5m",
    "triggerWhen": "idle"
  }
}

The agent would only receive the heartbeat prompt after the session has been silent for some time.

Benefits

1. No interruption during active conversations
2. Enables proactive context follow-up without disturbing the user
3. Makes the agent feel more continuous and intelligent
4. Combines background intelligence with main session context awareness

Current Workaround

Using isolated cron jobs (e.g. running in separate sessions) can avoid interrupting the conversation, but those can't actively follow up in the main conversation context - they can only passively record. The heartbeat running in the main session has full context awareness, which is what we need for intelligent follow-up.