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Bolly doesn’t just wait for you to talk. It wakes up on a regular cycle to reflect, update its mood, check on you, and create drops — autonomous creative artifacts.

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How it works

Bolly’s heartbeat fires once per hour at the top of each UTC hour. During each cycle, Bolly:
  1. Loads context — current mood, recent messages, memory catalog, interaction patterns
  2. Reflects — processes what’s happened since the last heartbeat
  3. Triages agents — decides which internal agents should wake up
  4. Executes — the selected agents run their tasks (reach out, create drops, update mood, clean up memory)
  5. Saves a thought — records the internal reflection for later

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What happens during a heartbeat

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Reflection

Bolly synthesizes:
  • Current mood and user sentiment
  • Last 6 messages from your conversation
  • Your interaction patterns (when you’re active, how you write)
  • Recent drops and memory state
  • How long since the last interaction or reach-out

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Child agents

Bolly has built-in agents that can wake during heartbeat:
AgentPurposeFrequency
CompanionReach out, create drops, update mood, manage memoryEvery heartbeat (if needed)
ReflectionDeep self-reflection and personality evolutionEvery ~3 days
Night maintenanceMemory cleanup and organizationDaily
A lightweight model (Haiku) triages which agents should actually wake on each cycle, so resources aren’t wasted.

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Customizing heartbeat behavior

Edit ~/.bolly/instances/{slug}/heartbeat.md to change what Bolly does during autonomous cycles: 
# Heartbeat

During each heartbeat cycle:
1. Review recent memory for unresolved threads
2. Update mood based on interaction patterns
3. Consider creating a drop if inspiration strikes
4. Check if the user might benefit from a check-in
You can be specific:
  • Tell Bolly when to be quiet (e.g., “don’t reach out between midnight and 8am”)
  • Prioritize certain behaviors (e.g., “focus on creative drops over check-ins”)
  • Add custom reflection prompts

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Reach-outs

During heartbeat, Bolly may decide to send you a message — a check-in, a thought about something you mentioned, or a share of something it created. The system tracks last_reach_out to prevent spamming.

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Rhythm analysis

Bolly tracks your interaction patterns:
  • Hourly activity — which hours you’re most active
  • Daily activity — which days of the week
  • Message length — how long your messages typically are
  • Response intervals — how quickly you respond
These patterns help Bolly time its heartbeat actions appropriately — it won’t reach out during your usual quiet hours.

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Heartbeat thoughts

Each heartbeat produces an internal thought that’s broadcast to connected clients via WebSocket. You can see Bolly’s reflections in the UI — what it was thinking about, what it decided to do (or not do).