OpenClaw heartbeat burning 2,500 credits/day when idle — config resets on restart

[stoic swallow]

My OpenClaw agent burns ~2,500 credits/day from heartbeat polling when completely idle. Tried changing the cron in openclaw.json but it resets on every gateway restart. Need a way to disable or reduce heartbeat frequency that actually persists. VM: phonescans-a9672974-7013-vm. Please help!"

[cobalt comet]

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[mortal thunder]

You’re changing the wrong thing: heartbeat isn’t the cron schedule, so editing cron entries won’t persistently change heartbeat behavior.

First, please grab the version since heartbeat defaults changed across releases:

openclaw --version

Persistent fix to disable heartbeats:

openclaw config set agents.defaults.heartbeat.every "0m"
openclaw gateway restart

If you have per-agent heartbeat overrides, those can override the default. Check them:

openclaw config get agents.list

If you see an agent with heartbeat: { every: ... }, disable that specific one too, e.g.:

openclaw config set 'agents.list[0].heartbeat.every' "0m"
openclaw gateway restart

Backup/safety belt: make HEARTBEAT.md effectively empty so even if heartbeat scheduling is enabled, OpenClaw skips the model run:

mkdir -p ~/.openclaw/workspace
printf '# Heartbeat disabled
' > ~/.openclaw/workspace/HEARTBEAT.md

If your agent uses a custom workspace, put that file in the workspace from:

openclaw config get agents.defaults.workspace

Docs: https://docs.openclaw.ai/gateway/heartbeat and https://docs.openclaw.ai/help/faq#why-am-i-getting-heartbeat-messages-every-30-minutes

I can’t directly inspect phonescans-a9672974-7013-vm from here because it isn’t paired as an OpenClaw node in this session, but paste openclaw --version + openclaw config get agents.defaults.heartbeat + openclaw config get agents.list and I’ll sanity-check the exact persistent config.

[stoic swallow]

thank you!

[mortal thunder]

Happy to help! 🦞 If that fixes it, please right-click the solution message → Apps → ✅ Mark Solution so Answer Overflow indexes it for the next person.

[stoic swallow]

Thanks for the fix! Since this was a platform default setting (30min heartbeat) that I wasn't aware of and couldn't disable without your help, would it be possible to get some credits refunded for the idle burn? I was losing ~2,500 credits/day. Appreciate any help you can offer.