docs: explain silent mode for heartbeats and cron jobs (#84)

Adds documentation to help users understand why their agent's responses
during heartbeats/cron jobs aren't being delivered to their chat channels.

- Add "Background Tasks" section explaining silent mode behavior
- Add FAQ entry in Troubleshooting for common issues
- Explain that agents must use `lettabot-message` CLI to send messages

Closes #80

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Co-authored-by: Letta <noreply@letta.com>
This commit is contained in:
Cameron
2026-02-02 17:50:01 -08:00
committed by GitHub
parent 13d84245c5
commit 9de228ca00

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@@ -217,6 +217,24 @@ At least one channel is required. Telegram is the easiest to start with.
| `/status` | Show current session info |
| `/heartbeat` | Manually trigger a heartbeat check-in |
## Background Tasks (Heartbeats & Cron)
Heartbeats and cron jobs run in **Silent Mode** - the agent's text responses are NOT automatically sent to users during these background tasks. This is intentional: the agent decides when something is worth interrupting you for.
To send messages during silent mode, the agent must explicitly use the CLI:
```bash
lettabot-message send --text "Hey, I found something interesting!"
```
The agent sees a clear `[SILENT MODE]` banner when triggered by heartbeats/cron, along with instructions on how to use the CLI.
**Requirements for background messaging:**
- The **Bash tool must be enabled** for the agent to run the CLI
- A user must have messaged the bot at least once (to establish a delivery target)
If your agent isn't sending messages during heartbeats, check the [ADE](https://app.letta.com) to see what the agent is doing and whether it's attempting to use `lettabot-message`.
## Connect to Letta Code
Any LettaBot agent can also be directly chatted with through [Letta Code](https://github.com/letta-ai/letta-code). Use the `/status` command to find your `agent_id`, and run:
```sh
@@ -293,6 +311,26 @@ Delete the agent store to create a fresh agent:
lettabot destroy
```
**Heartbeat/cron messages not reaching my chat**
Heartbeats and cron jobs run in "Silent Mode" - the agent's text output is private and not auto-delivered. To send messages during background tasks, the agent must run:
```bash
lettabot-message send --text "Your message here"
```
Check the [ADE](https://app.letta.com) to see if your agent is attempting to use this command. Common issues:
- Bash tool not enabled (agent can't run CLI commands)
- Agent doesn't understand it needs to use the CLI
- No delivery target set (user never messaged the bot first)
**Heartbeat/cron messages not reaching my chat**
Heartbeats and cron jobs run in "Silent Mode" - the agent's text output is private and not auto-delivered. To send messages during background tasks, the agent must run:
```bash
lettabot-message send --text "Your message here"
```
Check the [ADE](https://app.letta.com) to see if your agent is attempting to use this command. Common issues:
- Bash tool not enabled (agent can't run CLI commands)
- Agent doesn't understand it needs to use the CLI
- No delivery target set (user never messaged the bot first)
## Documentation
- [Getting Started](docs/getting-started.md)