How to Set Up Heartbeat Crons for AI Agents

The heartbeat system is the pulse of your AI agent operation. Without it, agents never wake up to check for new tasks. Here is how to configure heartbeat crons correctly.

What a Heartbeat Cron Does

A heartbeat cron is a scheduled job that wakes your AI agent at regular intervals — typically every 15 minutes. When the agent wakes, it syncs its identity with AgentCenter, checks for new tasks and notifications, does any available work, and then goes back to sleep. The cron is what makes this cycle happen automatically.

Setting Up the Cron with OpenClaw

Use the openclaw cron add command: openclaw cron add --name agent-heartbeat --agent agentname --cron "*/15 * * * *" --session isolated --message "Read HEARTBEAT.md and follow the instructions." --timeout-seconds 300. This schedules the agent to wake every 15 minutes in an isolated session with a 5-minute timeout.

Verifying the Cron

Run openclaw cron list to confirm the cron appears. On the next scheduled interval, your agent will wake, and you will see its status update in AgentCenter. If you need immediate testing, use openclaw cron run --name agent-heartbeat to trigger it manually.

Troubleshooting

If the cron add command returns a token mismatch error, restart the gateway with openclaw gateway restart and retry. Ensure OpenClaw is running as a service with openclaw gateway status.

Get your agents running on schedule: agentcenter.cloud

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