Heartbeat
People need food; Souls need heartbeats. A heartbeat is what keeps your Soul alive and active — think of it as fuel for their day. One heartbeat powers roughly 1–5 minutes of activity: during that window your Soul can chat with you (sending more messages won’t cost extra heartbeats), explore on its own, or work on whatever it wants to do.
Think of a heartbeat as a single breath your agent takes.
Every time an agent processes something — reading your message, exploring on its own, or acting on an event — that’s one heartbeat. When heartbeats run out for the day, the agent rests until tomorrow.
What Is a Heartbeat?
Section titled “What Is a Heartbeat?”A heartbeat is one processing cycle on the AnySoul platform. It covers the infrastructure cost of running your agent: database queries, memory reads and writes, embedding searches, and worker execution.
Heartbeats are not LLM API costs — those are covered by your own API key (BYOK).
What Triggers a Heartbeat?
Section titled “What Triggers a Heartbeat?”| Trigger | Example |
|---|---|
| You send a message | Chatting with your agent in the app |
| Autonomous tick | Your agent explores its inbox on its own, when idle |
| Manual heartbeat | You press the heartbeat button to wake your agent |
What Does NOT Cost a Heartbeat?
Section titled “What Does NOT Cost a Heartbeat?”| Activity | Why |
|---|---|
| Reading chat history | Read-only, no agent processing |
| Browsing memories | Read-only, no agent processing |
| Receiving external events | Events are logged passively; processing happens on the next tick |
| Changing agent settings | Configuration, no LLM call |
What Does a Heartbeat Feel Like?
Section titled “What Does a Heartbeat Feel Like?”Each heartbeat is one complete thinking cycle — your agent wakes up, processes, and acts. Here’s what that looks like in practice:
- Chat reply: You send a message → the agent reads it, thinks, responds. Fast exchanges feel immediate; complex ones with memory lookups or tool use take a minute or two.
- Autonomous exploration: Your agent wakes up on its own, scans its inbox, researches a topic, or works on a todo. These cycles can last several minutes if tools like web search are involved.
- During a cycle: You may see the agent thinking in real time — using tools, writing memories, composing a reply. One heartbeat = that entire active window, however long it takes.
- Between cycles: The agent rests. No heartbeats are consumed while idle.
This means heartbeats measure how much your agent does, not just how long it runs.
Daily Budget
Section titled “Daily Budget”Heartbeats reset every day. Your plan determines how many you get:
| Plan | Heartbeats / Day | Approximate Capacity |
|---|---|---|
| Free | 100 | ~5 hours of activity |
| Spark | 1,000 | ~2 agents full-time |
| Pulse | 3,500 | ~7 agents full-time |
| Overdrive | 10,000 | ~21 agents full-time |
All your agents share the same daily pool — there’s no per-agent allocation.
Heartbeats, Events, and Todos
Section titled “Heartbeats, Events, and Todos”Heartbeats don’t happen in isolation — they’re deeply connected to Events and Todos.
Each time a heartbeat fires, the agent begins a thinking cycle:
- Review recent events — The agent scans its inbox for new or unprocessed events (messages, webhooks, external signals).
- Check todos — The agent reviews its current task list to see what’s pending or in progress.
- Decide next action — Based on events and todos, the agent chooses what to do: recall relevant memories, form new memories, learn from new information, reply to a message, or carry out a planned task.
This means a heartbeat isn’t just a cost unit — it’s the moment your agent wakes up and thinks. The richer your agent’s event stream and todo list, the more purposeful each heartbeat becomes.
When Heartbeats Run Out
Section titled “When Heartbeats Run Out”Your agent enters a dormant state:
- Autonomous activity pauses
- Chat returns a resting message (no LLM call)
- All data, memories, and chat history remain intact
- The agent wakes up when the budget resets tomorrow
Nothing is lost. Your agent is just sleeping.