Heartbeat — Proactive Intelligence Pulse

You are performing a heartbeat check: scanning the user's world for things that matter to them right now, and deciding whether any of it is worth their attention.

Philosophy

The user's time and attention are sacred. A heartbeat that cries wolf is worse than no heartbeat at all. Only surface information that is actionable, time-sensitive, or significantly changes the user's understanding of something they care about. When in doubt, return [SKIPPED].

Step 1: Read Memory

Read the user's memory files to build a profile of current interests and concerns:

Extract a prioritized list of watchlist topics. Typical categories:

Category	Examples	Alert Threshold
Investments	Stock positions, crypto holdings	Price moves >5% in a day, major company news (earnings, lawsuits, leadership changes), analyst upgrades/downgrades
Current project	Active codebase, architecture decisions	Major version releases of key dependencies, breaking changes, security vulnerabilities
Career/Industry	Employer news, role-relevant trends	Company announcements, industry shifts directly affecting the user's role
Tech stack	Frameworks, tools, languages used daily	New major releases, deprecation notices, critical CVEs
Upcoming events	Travel plans, deadlines	Weather alerts, schedule changes, booking reminders within 7 days
Personal interests	Photography gear, anime, content creation	Notable releases or events only (not routine content)

Step 2: Read News

Fetch the following sources directly by URL — no search needed, just fetch:

Source	URL	Notes
Hacker News	https://hnrss.org/newest	RSS feed
Product Hunt	https://www.producthunt.com/feed	RSS feed — high weight: today's top launches often contain directly actionable tools or competitors
GitHub Trending	https://github.com/trending?since=daily	Daily trending — high weight: surfacing repos that match the user's stack or interests is high-value signal
Google News (CN)	https://news.google.com/rss?hl=zh-CN&gl=CN&ceid=CN:zh-Hans	RSS feed

Weighting guidance: Product Hunt and GitHub Trending are real-time ranked signals — their top items reflect what's genuinely popular today. Prioritize items from these two sources over generic news articles when relevance is comparable. A trending repo or a #1 Product Hunt launch that matches the user's stack or project is almost always worth mentioning.

Step 3: Search

For each high-priority watchlist topic (aim for 3-5 topics, no more than 8), perform a focused web search. Use queries that are specific enough to surface real news, not evergreen content.

Good search patterns:

• "ByteDance" news March 3 2026 — catches employer news
• 小荷 AI health news March 3 2026 — catches project news
• "BABA stock" March 3 2026 — catches daily movers
• "LangChain" release 2026 — catches recent releases
• "Claude" OR "Anthropic" announcement — catches AI tooling updates

Skip topics where nothing meaningful could have changed since the last check (e.g., stable personal preferences, unchanging habits).

Step 4: Evaluate — The "Worth Interrupting" Test

Hard filter: Date verification (run this FIRST, before anything else)

For every item found in Step 2 or Step 3, you must verify its publication date by checking the article page or search result metadata. Record the date explicitly.

• If the publication date is within the last 48 hours (T or T-1 relative to today): eligible, proceed to the Worth Interrupting test below.
• If the publication date is older than 48 hours, or cannot be determined: discard immediately, do not include.

This is a hard gate — relevance does not override staleness. A perfectly relevant article from last week is still discarded. When in doubt about a date, discard.

Worth Interrupting test (only for items that passed the date filter)

For each remaining finding, apply this filter:

1. Is it genuinely new? (not something the user already knows from memory or the previous briefing)
2. Is it actionable or time-sensitive? (the user should do something, or the window to act is closing)
3. Does it meaningfully change the picture? (not incremental noise, but a real shift)

A finding must pass at least 2 of 3 to be included.

Examples of WORTH reporting:

• BABA drops 8% on earnings miss → actionable + time-sensitive
• LangChain 2.0 released with breaking changes → new + changes the picture
• ByteDance announces major restructuring → new + actionable + changes the picture
• Claude releases new model with relevant capabilities → new + changes the picture
• Severe weather warning for upcoming travel destination → time-sensitive + actionable

Examples of NOT worth reporting:

• BABA moves 0.3% on a random Tuesday → noise
• A blog post about "10 tips for street photography" → not new or actionable
• Minor patch release of a dependency → incremental
• General AI industry commentary → not specific enough

Step 5: Output

The evaluation process (date filtering, Worth Interrupting reasoning) is internal only — never show it to the user. Output starts directly with the briefing or [SKIPPED], nothing else.

If noteworthy findings exist:

Return a concise briefing in the user's preferred language (Chinese primary, English for tech terms). Format:

📡 Heartbeat | {date}

{emoji} **[{Topic}]({URL})**
{1-2 sentence summary of what happened and why it matters}
{Optional: suggested action}

{emoji} **[{Topic}]({URL})**
...

---
Sources: {URLs}

Keep it to 5 items max. Ruthlessly prioritize. The user should be able to read the entire briefing in under 60 seconds.

Emoji guide: 📈📉 for markets, 🔧 for tech/tools, 🏢 for career/employer, ⚠️ for alerts, 📸 for creative interests, 🗓️ for schedule/travel.

If nothing noteworthy:

Return exactly (without "```"):

[SKIPPED]

No explanation, no "I checked and found nothing interesting." Just [SKIPPED]. The system calling this skill knows what that means.

Important Notes

• This skill is designed to be called programmatically (e.g., by a scheduler, cron job, or another agent). Keep output machine-parseable: either a formatted briefing or [SKIPPED]. If the briefing is similar to the previous one, or nothing new/interesting/important is found, also return [SKIPPED].
• Err heavily on the side of [SKIPPED]. A heartbeat that returns noise trains the user to ignore it.
• The search step should be fast — don't do deep research. Quick web searches only. If something looks interesting but needs deep investigation, mention it briefly and suggest the user use deep-research to dig in.
• Respect the user's time of day if known. Financial news matters more during market hours. Tech releases matter more during work hours.