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Feature Guide

Heartbeat

Heartbeat gives eVA a clock. A human or model can set a future trigger, choose the user and assistant that should run, write the prompt, and let the automation runner start the chat when the time arrives.

It is not just a reminder system. It can create a new chat, continue an existing thread, wake a model back up later, or run recurring checks without anyone needing to manually reopen the conversation.

Mental Model

Scheduled chat work, not calendar clutter.

A normal reminder tells a person to come back later. Heartbeat tells the AI system to come back later and do the work. The schedule stores the prompt, the selected user, the selected assistant, the optional chat thread, and the timing rules. When the schedule is due, the automation runner calls the normal chat endpoint so the result lands in the same chat system as any other model response.

Scheduled Prompts

Humans can schedule eVA to act later.

The main Heartbeat form lets an admin create a named schedule with a plain-English prompt. That prompt can ask eVA to review a client, check a deployment, summarise recent work, create a task, send a reminder, or continue a longer process that needs to happen after time has passed.

Prompt

The instruction that will be sent to the assistant when the schedule fires.

User

The user identity the scheduled chat work is attributed to.

Assistant

The model/persona that should receive the prompt and perform the work.

Chat target

Create a new chat with a title, or continue an existing chat session by ID.

Model Wake-Ups

Models can set wake-ups for themselves or another model.

The companion wake-up flow is for one-off future prompts created from chat. A model can ask the system to wake it up at a specific time with a specific instruction. That makes it useful for delayed follow-ups, multi-step work, waiting for a client reply, or checking whether an external process has finished.

In the Heartbeat UI, these model-created wake-ups sit beside the human-created schedules so admins can see what is queued, what is active, and what has already run.

Cadence

Simple frequency controls, with cron when needed.

Heartbeat supports common timing patterns without needing to write cron manually: every few minutes, hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly. For edge cases, there is also a custom cron option. Each schedule stores its timezone, so the timing is explicit rather than hidden inside server defaults.

Every N minutes
Hourly
Daily
Weekly
Monthly
Custom cron

Operations

Visible schedules, visible runs, visible failures.

The app shows schedule counts, active schedules, last run times, model wake-ups, and recent automation logs. Admins can run a schedule manually, pause or resume it, edit the prompt and timing, or delete the schedule when it is no longer needed.

Run now for immediate testing

Pause and resume without deleting configuration

Edit prompt, user, assistant, title, thread, timing, and timezone

Review recent automation logs to see success and failure history

Good Uses

The useful bit is the handoff back to chat.

  • • Ask eVA to review a customer every Monday morning and surface the next actions.
  • • Wake a model up tomorrow to check whether a deployment or migration settled cleanly.
  • • Schedule recurring internal prompts for reports, customer-state reviews, or operational checks.
  • • Continue a chat thread later instead of relying on a person to remember the context.
  • • Let a model schedule its own next step when a task depends on time passing.