A scheduled trigger that runs on its own — every hour, every day, or every week. Free, no coding required.
This guide assumes you already have OpenClaw installed and running. If you do not, follow one of these guides first:
localhost:3000If you have those first three items checked, you are ready. Let us build your first Heartbeat.
OpenClaw is free and open-source. FREE FOREVER Building and running Heartbeat automations costs nothing. The only cost is AI usage if your automation uses an AI step.
AI usage depends on your provider. If you are using OpenAI, each request costs about $0.01–$0.03. A daily Heartbeat that runs once per day costs roughly $0.30–$0.90 per month. Google Gemini has a free tier that covers light usage at no cost.
A Heartbeat that runs once a day with a simple prompt costs less than a cup of coffee per month.
Bottom line: Building the automation is free. Running it costs pennies per day if you use an AI brain. Skip the AI step entirely and it costs nothing forever.
Every chapter follows the same pattern: what you are doing, how to do it step by step, and when to use it. By the end of all 8 chapters, you will have a working Heartbeat automation that runs on its own, plus a list of ideas for your next 10 automations.
A Heartbeat is a scheduled trigger. Think of it like an alarm clock for your AI. You set a time, and it wakes up and does a job. Every hour, every day, every Monday — you pick the schedule.
This is the simplest kind of automation. No waiting for someone to do something. No listening for events. Your AI just runs on its own, on time, every time.
There are many types of triggers in OpenClaw — webhook triggers, email triggers, form triggers, and more. But the Heartbeat is the best one to start with because:
| Who Uses It | What the Heartbeat Does | Schedule |
|---|---|---|
| Freelance consultant | Sends a daily summary of tasks and priorities to their inbox | Every morning at 7 AM |
| Small e-commerce shop (12 people) | Pulls sales numbers and emails a report to the owner | Every day at 9 AM |
| HR department (150-person company) | Sends a weekly Monday reminder about the team standup | Every Monday at 8:30 AM |
| Individual content creator | Generates social media post ideas and saves them to a spreadsheet | Every day at 6 AM |
| IT team (400-person company) | Checks server status and alerts the team if something is down | Every hour |
Pro Tip: If you find yourself doing the same task at the same time every day or week, that is a Heartbeat. Automate it and get that time back.
Any time you need something to happen on a schedule without you being there to press a button. Daily reports, weekly reminders, hourly checks, monthly summaries. If it has a clock, it is a Heartbeat.
In this chapter, you create a new automation in OpenClaw and set the Heartbeat trigger. By the end, you will have a trigger that fires on your chosen schedule. The next chapters will add the actions.
Make sure OpenClaw is running. Open your browser to http://localhost:3000.
In the sidebar, click Automations. Then click the New Automation button.
Click the title at the top (it might say "Untitled" or "New Automation"). Type a clear name like "Daily Morning Briefing" or "Weekly Report Email."
Click the trigger block on the canvas. In the list of triggers, find and select Heartbeat (it might also be called "Schedule" or "Cron").
Pick how often you want it to run. For your first Heartbeat, we recommend once a day. Pick a time, like 8:00 AM.
| Schedule | Best For | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Every hour | Monitoring, status checks | Check if your website is up |
| Every day | Reports, summaries, reminders | Morning briefing at 8 AM |
| Every week | Weekly digests, planning | Monday morning team update |
| Every month | Monthly reviews, billing reminders | First-of-month expense summary |
Important: Make sure you pick the right time zone. OpenClaw should show your local time zone by default, but double-check in Settings if the times seem off.
Every automation starts with a trigger. You will follow these same steps every time you build a new Heartbeat — just change the name and the schedule.
Now that your Heartbeat knows when to run, you need to tell it what to do. In this chapter, you add an AI step that generates content every time the Heartbeat fires.
Think of it like setting an alarm (Chapter 2) and then telling your assistant what task to do when the alarm goes off (this chapter).
On the canvas, you will see a + button below your trigger block. Click it.
In the search bar, type OpenAI (or whichever AI brain you connected in the install guide). Click it.
Select the action that lets you send a prompt and get a text response back.
This is the instruction you give the AI. For your first Heartbeat, try a daily briefing prompt. Here is a good one for a freelancer:
Here is another option for a small team lead:
And one for a department in a larger organization:
Quick Win: You just connected a scheduled trigger to an AI brain. Every time the Heartbeat fires, the AI will generate fresh content. No human needs to do anything.
Add an AI step any time you want your automation to generate, summarize, classify, or analyze text. You can also skip the AI step entirely and go straight to an action like "Send Email" or "Post to Slack" with static content.
Your automation now knows when to run (Heartbeat) and what to generate (AI step). Now you need to tell it where to send the result. In this chapter, you add an email step that delivers the AI output straight to your inbox.
On the canvas, click the + button that appears below your AI block.
If you connected Gmail in your Connections, search for Gmail. If not, look for a built-in Send Email action.
Gmail is free with limits — you can send up to 500 emails per day on a personal account. If you use Google Workspace (business Gmail), the limit is 2,000 per day. For a daily Heartbeat sending one email to yourself, you will never hit these limits.
A single daily Heartbeat uses 1 of your 500 daily emails. That is 0.2% of your limit.
Configure the email:
{{steps.ai.output}} or you can drag a reference from the AI step's output.Click Save (usually in the top right corner). Your automation now has three parts: a Heartbeat trigger, an AI step, and an email delivery step.
Pro Tip: You are not limited to email. You can swap the email step for Slack, Google Sheets, Discord, or any other connected app. Email is just the easiest one to start with because you can see the result immediately in your inbox.
Add an email step any time you want results delivered to an inbox. For team notifications, consider Slack instead. For data storage, try Google Sheets. The pattern is always the same: Trigger, Action, Delivery.
Before you turn on the Heartbeat for real, run a manual test. This makes sure every step works — the AI generates content, the email sends, and you receive it in your inbox.
Analogy: You would not set a sprinkler system to run every morning without testing it first. Same idea. Test once, then let it run forever.
Look for a Test or Run Once button in the top-right area of the canvas. Click it.
The Heartbeat trigger fires immediately (since this is a manual test). The AI step processes your prompt. The email step sends the message.
Open your email. You should see a new message with the subject line you set and the AI-generated content in the body.
If the email did not arrive: Check your spam folder first. Then go to the Runs section in the sidebar to see if any step failed. Click the failed step for error details. Common issues: wrong email address, Gmail connection expired (reconnect it), or AI API key ran out of credits.
Always test before activating. And test again any time you change the prompt, the schedule, or the delivery step. One click to test. Thirty seconds to verify.
Your automation tested successfully. Now you activate it so it runs on its own, on the schedule you set. Then you learn how to monitor it in the Runs log.
Look for an Activate button or an on/off toggle at the top of the canvas. Turn it on.
If you set it to daily at 8 AM, wait until 8 AM tomorrow. The email should arrive automatically. If you want to see it work sooner, set the schedule to "every hour" temporarily.
Click Runs in the sidebar. You will see a list of every time your automation has run. Each entry shows the time, the status (success or failed), and the details of each step.
Quick Win: You now have an AI assistant that wakes up on schedule, creates content, and delivers it to you — without you doing anything. A personal assistant that works while you sleep, for free.
Pro Tip: Check the Runs log once a week for the first month. After that, you can trust it and only check if something feels off. If a run fails, OpenClaw will usually show you exactly what went wrong.
Activate your Heartbeat after every successful test. Check the Runs log weekly to make sure things are humming along. If you ever need to pause the automation, flip the toggle back to off — it will not delete anything.
Now that you know how to build a Heartbeat, here are 10 real automations you can build today. Each one uses the same pattern: Heartbeat trigger, one or more action steps, and a delivery step. Copy any of these prompts and adapt them to your situation.
Action Step: Pick one idea from this list. Build it right now. Copy the prompt, create a new Heartbeat automation, paste the prompt into the AI step, add an email step, test it, and activate it. Ten minutes, start to finish.
Come back to this chapter every time you want to build a new Heartbeat. Each idea follows the same three-step pattern: Heartbeat trigger, AI step with prompt, delivery step. Adapt the prompts to your specific role and business.
You have a working Heartbeat automation. This final chapter covers the most common issues, pro tips for reliability, and a plan for building your next automations.
| Problem | Likely Cause | How to Fix It |
|---|---|---|
| Heartbeat does not run | Automation is set to "Paused" | Check that the toggle is set to "Active." It is easy to accidentally pause it. |
| Wrong time | Time zone mismatch | Go to Settings and verify your time zone is correct. Adjust the schedule if needed. |
| AI step fails | API key expired or out of credits | Check your AI provider account. Top up credits or renew your API key. Reconnect in OpenClaw's Connections page. |
| Email not received | Spam filter or wrong address | Check spam/junk folder. Verify the email address in the automation. Try sending to a different email. |
| "Run failed" in Runs log | A step encountered an error | Click the failed run to see which step broke. The error message usually tells you exactly what went wrong. |
| Heartbeat runs but nothing happens | OpenClaw is not running | Make sure Terminal/PowerShell is still running openclaw start. If your computer restarted, you need to start it again. |
Important: OpenClaw must be running for Heartbeats to fire. If you shut down your computer or close Terminal/PowerShell, your Heartbeats will not run until you start OpenClaw again. For 24/7 reliability, keep your computer on or look into running OpenClaw on a cloud server.
Tip 1: Start with longer schedules. Set your first Heartbeat to run once a day. After you confirm it works for a week, you can make it more frequent if needed.
Tip 2: Always test before activating. One manual test takes 30 seconds and saves you from discovering a broken automation days later.
Tip 3: Check the Runs log weekly. Spend 60 seconds once a week scanning for any failed runs. Catch problems before they pile up.
Tip 4: Keep prompts specific. Vague prompts get vague results. Tell the AI exactly who it is, what to write, what format to use, and how long it should be.
Tip 5: Name your automations clearly. When you have 10 automations, "Daily Sales Report" is much easier to find than "Untitled Automation 7."
Action Step: Check your inbox tomorrow morning. When you see that email from your Heartbeat, you will feel the power of automation. That feeling — "I did not have to do anything and it still happened" — is why people get hooked. Build the next one immediately.
Come back to this troubleshooting section whenever a Heartbeat misbehaves. Follow the action plan to build momentum. The people who get the most from automation are not the most technical ones. They are the ones who build one more automation every week.
Bookmark this section. The pattern is always the same.
| Step | What to Do | Time |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Click New Automation and name it | 10 seconds |
| 2 | Select Heartbeat trigger, set the schedule | 30 seconds |
| 3 | Add an AI step with your prompt | 2 minutes |
| 4 | Add a delivery step (email, Slack, Sheets) | 1 minute |
| 5 | Click Test and verify the output | 30 seconds |
| 6 | Click Activate | 5 seconds |
| 7 | Check Runs log weekly | 60 seconds/week |
Total time to build a Heartbeat: Under 5 minutes once you have done it once.
You built your first Heartbeat automation. Here are three ways to keep building:
Our recommendation: When connecting an AI model to OpenClaw, we recommend Claude by Anthropic. It follows instructions precisely, handles structured data well, and takes your privacy seriously. You're welcome to use any AI tool — ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity all work great. But if you want our honest pick, try Claude.
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