OpenClaw's heartbeat feature: cheap local checks first, LLMs only when needed

OpenClaw, formerly known as Moltbot and Clawdbot, has gained traction for its local automation that monitors a machine, spots drift, and acts early. Its heartbeat feature runs periodic ticks through a layered pipeline, starting with inexpensive deterministic checks such as process status, file state, queue depth, and API health. Model escalation happens only when those checks leave real ambiguity, which reduces cost and unpredictability. The article presents the heartbeat as a control-plane primitive for agent infrastructure, organized as a five-stage loop with strict probe schemas, TTL-based caching, and a health state machine using hysteresis. The guidance is aimed at developers building their own agent systems who want predictable behavior and fewer unnecessary model calls.