goal-heartbeat-engine

What This Skill Does

The goal-heartbeat-engine is an advanced state machine designed to keep your OpenClaw AI agents productive and focused. It operates on a strict principle: every "heartbeat" (triggered by cron or自主 decision) must result in a tangible, high-quality output. It manages a rotation between multiple long-term objectives, ensuring no goal is neglected while maintaining a healthy, non-repetitive workflow. By tracking "goal health" and maintaining a persistent state in PULSE.md and GOALS.md, the engine forces the agent to move beyond planning into active execution. It employs a dice-roll mechanism for task selection to prevent path dependency, enforces quality "red lines" to ensure deep work, and tracks a relay-style task continuation system to handle complex, multi-stage projects.

Installation

To integrate this engine into your OpenClaw environment, execute the following command in your terminal: clawhub install openclaw/skills/skills/wilsonliu95/goal-heartbeat After installation, ensure your workspace/memory/ directory is prepared with a properly formatted GOALS.md file, as the engine depends on this to perform its health checks and task assignment.

Use Cases

• Autonomous Research Agent: Use this to cycle between market research, competitor analysis, and personal knowledge management, ensuring each target gets consistent attention.
• Content Creation Pipeline: Manage multiple writing projects simultaneously, ensuring the agent constantly pushes forward progress without getting stuck on a single task for too long.
• Software Development Lifecycle: Keep an agent focused on balancing refactoring, feature implementation, and technical debt resolution across a project codebase.

Example Prompts

• "Initialize the goal-heartbeat-engine by scanning my current tasks in GOALS.md and starting the first rotation."
• "Review the recent pulse logs and explain why the agent prioritized the 'Productivity Tool' goal over the 'Market Research' objective during the last cycle."
• "Force a manual heartbeat trigger to ensure the 'Data Cleanup' task is finished before the end of the current session."

Tips & Limitations

• Tip: Regularly review the PULSE.md file to verify that the agent's "health metrics" align with your actual priorities. If a goal is consistently labeled STARVED, increase the weight of its sub-tasks in GOALS.md.
• Limitation: The engine is designed for long-term goal management. It may be overkill for simple, singular tasks or reactive workflows. Always ensure your "Red Lines" are clearly defined to prevent the agent from delivering superficial work.