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By the end of this guide, you’ll have a heartbeat monitor watching for periodic pings from your background job. If the ping stops arriving, DevHelm opens an incident.
  • DevHelm CLI installed or an API token for REST calls
  • An API token set as DEVHELM_API_TOKEN — see Authentication
  • A cron job, background worker, or scheduled task to monitor

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How heartbeats work

Unlike other monitor types where DevHelm checks your service, heartbeat monitors work in reverse — your service pings DevHelm. If DevHelm doesn’t receive a ping within the expected interval plus a grace period, it opens an incident.

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Create the monitor

1

Create the heartbeat monitor

The CLI creates heartbeat monitors with a 60-second expected interval and grace period. For a daily job like this one, set expectedInterval and gracePeriod via YAML config-as-code or the API instead, as shown in the other tabs.The response includes a unique ping URL for this monitor.
2

Get the ping URL

Look for the pingUrl field — it looks like:
3

Add the ping to your job

Add a curl call at the end of your cron job or scheduled task:
4

Verify the first ping

Run your job once and confirm the ping arrived:

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Configuration fields

The monitor opens an incident if no ping arrives within expectedInterval + gracePeriod seconds after the last ping.

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Common patterns

For a job that runs every hour, set expectedInterval: 3600 and gracePeriod: 300 (5 minutes of slack).
Add a curl sidecar or post-completion hook that pings DevHelm after the job container exits successfully.
For long-running workers that process queues, add a periodic heartbeat in your main loop (e.g., every 5 minutes).
Use curl -fsS so the ping is only sent on HTTP success. If your script fails, the ping is skipped and DevHelm eventually opens an incident.
Heartbeat monitors cannot have probe regions — they rely on incoming pings from your infrastructure, not outbound checks.

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Next steps

Heartbeat reference

Full heartbeat configuration and assertion details.

Cron job monitoring

Advanced patterns for scheduled task monitoring.

First alert

Get notified when a heartbeat goes silent.