Heartbeat
Heartbeat is Theo’s background loop that periodically evaluates your installed scheduled skills and workflows — checking their schedule, your quiet hours, and credit availability before running.
In depth
The heartbeat runs every 30 minutes by default (per-user configurable), respects quiet hours and timezones, enforces the autonomous daily cap, and limits each cycle to one autonomous action per user.
It’s opt-in: you control whether Theo runs in the background and can pause it any time.
Also known as
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Configure heartbeatRelated terms
Skill
A skill is an installable extension that gives Theo a new behavior — a domain prompt, custom tools, allowed base tools, and an optional trigger (manual, event, schedule, or keyword).
Workflow
A workflow is a multi-step automation — tool calls, AI transforms, conditions, delays, and notifications wired together with branching logic and credit checkpoints.
Autonomous Daily Cap
The autonomous daily cap is a separate per-day credit budget for background actions — heartbeats, hooks, and workflows — so they can never drain your interactive credit balance.