Drumbeat

Drumbeat is Atlas’s way of staying situationally aware on your behalf. Rather than waiting for you to ask, Atlas periodically checks in during your active hours and proactively surfaces things that deserve your attention — overdue tasks, meetings coming up, and anything else that might be worth a nudge.

Note

Drumbeat requires a Talk plan or active free trial.

What Drumbeat Does

Every time a drumbeat check runs, Atlas reviews:

• Overdue tasks — checkboxes in your notes that are past due
• Upcoming meetings — Google Calendar events in the next couple of hours (if calendar is connected)
• Items needing attention — anything configured in your drumbeat.md file that Atlas should check on

If Atlas finds something worth surfacing, it sends you a brief notification or message. If there’s nothing to flag, it stays quiet — you won’t get unnecessary pings.

Configuration

Drumbeat is configured in your vault at:

<vault>/atlas/memory/functions/drumbeat.md

You can customize this file to tell Atlas what to check for during each run. For example, you might configure it to:

• Check for unreviewed notes from the past 24 hours
• Summarize any calendar events starting within 90 minutes
• Flag any tasks tagged “urgent” that aren’t yet complete

Edit this file directly or ask Atlas to update it for you.

Settings

Configure drumbeat behavior in Settings > Automation:

Setting	Description	Default
Enable drumbeat	Turn the feature on or off	Off
Interval	How often Atlas checks in	30 minutes
Active hours start	Earliest hour drumbeat will run	8:00 AM
Active hours end	Latest hour drumbeat will run	10:00 PM

You can set the interval anywhere from 15 to 120 minutes depending on how frequently you want check-ins.

Tip

A 30-minute interval is a good starting point for most people. If you find it too frequent, bump it to 60 minutes. If you want lighter-touch awareness, 90 or 120 minutes works well for day-level planning.

Active Hours

Drumbeat only runs during your configured active hours. If you set active hours from 8 AM to 10 PM, drumbeat will never fire at midnight or 5 AM. This keeps check-ins contextually relevant and avoids interruptions outside your working day.

How It Differs from Reminders

Drumbeat is about ambient awareness — it reviews your state and tells you what to pay attention to. Reminders are explicit one-shot alerts for a specific thing you told Atlas not to forget.

	Drumbeat	Reminders
Triggered by	Schedule (recurring)	You (one-off)
Content	AI-reviewed overview of what needs attention	Specific text you provided
Frequency	Periodic (every N minutes)	Once, at a specific time
Stops when	You turn it off	After it fires

The two features complement each other well — use drumbeat for ongoing ambient awareness and reminders for specific, time-sensitive things.

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Next: Scheduled Tasks