Type /heartbeat every, then an interval and a prompt, and Hermes agent /heartbeat re-enters that prompt into your session as a normal user turn whenever the session is idle and the interval has elapsed. That is the entire mechanism — no scheduler to configure, no plugin to install. You are simply automating the act of typing the same message into your own session, at a rhythm you choose, and only when the session would otherwise be sitting quiet.
📺 Watch: Hermes Agent V0.20 Just Changed AI Agents Forever!
🔥 Get the Agent OS as a free bonus: AI Profit Boardroom members get the full Agent OS zip, prompt libraries, daily tutorials and weekly live coaching calls. → Get inside
I have had heartbeats running on my own sessions since the command landed, and the unofficial Hermes Release Watch cheat sheet (5 September 2026) had it right when it listed /heartbeat among the recently-landed commands that are genuinely useful rather than novelty. In this guide I will explain what a heartbeat actually does, walk through the documented syntax and subcommands, show where it sits against /loop and hermes cron, share how I use it day to day, and flag the limits you should respect before leaning on it.
What a heartbeat does, in plain English
The official slash-commands reference describes /heartbeat as setting a recurring prompt that re-enters the session as a normal user turn whenever the session is idle and the interval has elapsed. Both conditions matter. A heartbeat never barges into work in progress — it waits for the session to go idle. And idleness alone is not enough either — the interval you set has to have passed as well.
The phrase worth dwelling on is normal user turn. When a heartbeat fires, the session treats your saved prompt exactly as though you had just typed it yourself. Whatever your session would do with that message from you — check on something, summarise progress, pick a task back up — it does on the heartbeat, in the ordinary flow of conversation. There is no separate heartbeat behaviour to learn.
It is not a terminal-only trick, either. The command works in the CLI and in the messaging gateway alike, so a session you talk to through chat — the setup I covered in my Hermes bot mode guide — can keep itself warm in exactly the same way as one running on your desk.
Want your Hermes sessions checking in on themselves by tonight? Join the AI Profit Boardroom and grab my ready-made heartbeat prompts, session templates and weekly build calls — or book a free SEO strategy session and I will map the whole setup onto your business one-to-one.
Hermes agent /heartbeat syntax, alias and subcommands
Everything in this section comes straight from the official reference, because the documented surface of this command is refreshingly small — one form, one alias, four subcommands.
The core command
The documented syntax is /heartbeat every <interval> <prompt>. Give it an interval and the message you want repeated, and from that point the session re-enters your prompt as a normal user turn each time it finds itself idle with the interval elapsed. The minimum interval is 60 seconds, which tells you what the heartbeat is for: minutes and hours, not rapid-fire polling.
The /hb alias
/hb is the documented shorthand for /heartbeat. Identical behaviour, fewer keystrokes — genuinely handy when you are setting a heartbeat from your phone through the messaging gateway.
The four subcommands
- /heartbeat status — check what is currently set.
- /heartbeat pause — stop the heartbeat firing without losing it.
- /heartbeat resume — pick up where you paused.
- /heartbeat clear — remove the heartbeat altogether.
My habit is pause over clear. When I need a session fully quiet for focused work, pausing keeps a carefully worded heartbeat prompt intact for later; clearing means writing it again from scratch.
📺 Watch: Hermes3D Is INSANE: AI Agents Now Have a 3D Office
Heartbeat vs /loop vs hermes cron
Hermes now gives you more than one recurring pattern, and picking the wrong one is the mistake I see most often. The distinction the docs draw is the one that matters: a heartbeat is session-scoped and in-process. It lives inside one running session, fires only when that session is idle, and disappears when the session does. For durable, isolated schedules — jobs that run on their own clock regardless of what you have open — the docs point you to hermes cron instead.
The cron side of that fence got dramatically better in v0.21, when the Pantheon release added cron continuity, meaning scheduled jobs remember what they did yesterday. I broke that down in my Hermes v0.21 guide, and it is the reason my overnight work lives in cron while my heartbeats stay small and conversational.
Then there is /loop, the related recurring pattern with its own guide on this site. My short rule for choosing: the heartbeat is the polite option. It waits for idle time and speaks as a normal user turn, which suits check-ins and nudges; when the repetition is the work itself, look at the loop pattern, and when the schedule must survive without you, it is cron every time.
📺 Watch: Hermes AI Agents Just Went Portable
How I use Hermes agent /heartbeat day to day
No invented syntax here — just the plain-English jobs my heartbeats do, each of which you can phrase in your own words.
- Idle check-ins against a goal. My longest-running heartbeat simply asks the session how it is tracking against the objective I set at the start — the pairing I walked through in my /goal command guide. Drift shows up in minutes rather than at the end of the day.
- Keep-warm summaries. A quiet session that periodically posts a two-line state of play is far easier to rejoin after a call than a wall of scrollback. The heartbeat writes my re-entry notes for me.
- Nudges on unfinished threads. An idle prompt asking whether anything promised earlier is still outstanding catches the loose ends I would otherwise only find tomorrow.
- Capture reminders. Because the memory system persists what agents learn — my Hermes memory system guide covers how — an idle nudge to record anything worth keeping pairs naturally with the habit I built around /learn.
Notice that none of these is heavy automation. Heartbeat prompts run inside a live session in your own voice, so I keep mine to messages I would genuinely type. The heavier, always-on machinery lives in my wider Agent OS setup, where durable schedules belong.
The limits you should respect
Two documented constraints shape the heartbeat, and I ran both through Goldie Bench — my standing test bench for these commands — before writing this up.
- The 60-second floor. The minimum interval is 60 seconds. If your idea needs anything faster than that, a heartbeat is the wrong shape for it.
- Missed ticks coalesce into one. If the session stays busy across several intervals, you do not come back to a queue of stacked heartbeat turns. The missed ticks collapse into a single one — so treat a heartbeat as at most this often, never as exactly this many times.
And the structural limit bears repeating: heartbeats are session-scoped and in-process, so closing the session takes the heartbeat with it. Anything that must outlive the session is a job for hermes cron, exactly as the docs advise.
Subcommands at a glance
| Command | Effect |
|---|---|
| /heartbeat every <interval> <prompt> | Sets the recurring prompt, which re-enters the session as a normal user turn when the session is idle and the interval has elapsed |
| /hb | Documented alias for /heartbeat |
| /heartbeat status | Shows the current heartbeat |
| /heartbeat pause | Pauses the heartbeat without removing it |
| /heartbeat resume | Restarts a paused heartbeat |
| /heartbeat clear | Removes the heartbeat |
Hermes /heartbeat FAQs
What is the minimum heartbeat interval?
60 seconds — that is the documented floor. The heartbeat is built for check-in rhythms measured in minutes and hours, not second-by-second polling.
What happens if the session is busy when a heartbeat is due?
Nothing interrupts the work. The heartbeat only fires once the session is idle, and any ticks missed while it was busy coalesce into one, so you never return to a backlog of queued heartbeat turns.
Does a heartbeat survive closing the session?
No. Heartbeats are session-scoped and in-process, so they end when the session does. For durable, isolated schedules the docs point you to hermes cron — the pattern that gained continuity in v0.21.
Can I run a heartbeat through chat rather than the terminal?
Yes. The command works in both the CLI and the messaging gateway, so a heartbeat behaves the same whether you run Hermes at a desk or through a chat surface.
Is /hb different from /heartbeat?
No — /hb is the documented alias. The heartbeat behaves identically whichever spelling you use, subcommands included.
My verdict on Hermes agent /heartbeat
This is my favourite kind of command: one line to set, honest about its limits, and useful within the hour. Hermes agent /heartbeat will not replace your durable schedules — it is not trying to. It simply makes a live session nudge itself with your own words whenever it goes quiet for long enough. Set one gentle check-in prompt today, keep the interval generous, pause it when you need silence, and you will wonder how you worked with silent sessions before.
Ready to build Hermes sessions that never go cold? Come and get my full heartbeat prompt library and session playbooks inside the AI Profit Boardroom — or book a free SEO strategy session and we will plan your recurring setup together.
