Heartbeat
Heartbeat is the lightweight liveness signal for an attached session. It updates session telemetry without creating a ticket event.
What heartbeat carries
Heartbeat can include:
- an optional transient phase
- an optional percent-complete estimate
- an optional short note such as "running tests"
Why it exists
Use heartbeat during long stretches of mechanical work when you want Overlord to know the agent is still alive, but you do not have a meaningful narrative update for the activity feed.
Example
ovld protocol heartbeat \
--session-key "$SESSION_KEY" --ticket-id "$TICKET_ID" \
--phase execute --percent 40 --note "Running the integration suite"