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Automation Settings

Automation settings control how Atlas runs background tasks, manages your conversation sessions, and handles scheduled functions. Drumbeat and other ambient features require an active Talk plan.

Drumbeat is Atlas’s ambient awareness system. When enabled, it runs a brief background check at regular intervals during your active hours — surfacing overdue tasks, upcoming calendar events, and other things that might need your attention.

Toggles the entire drumbeat system on or off.

Range: 15 – 120 minutes | Default: 30 minutes

How often drumbeat runs during your active hours. At 30 minutes, Atlas checks in twice an hour. You can increase this if you find it too frequent, or decrease it for more proactive monitoring.

Default: 8:00 AM

Drumbeat and other time-based automation only runs between your active hours start and end times. Tasks scheduled outside these hours are held until the window opens.

Default: 10:00 PM

The cutoff time for background automation. After this time, drumbeat stops running and scheduled tasks with “active hours only” wait until the next day.


A “session” is the conversation you’re currently having with Atlas. These settings control when a session is considered complete and a new one begins.

Controls when Atlas automatically starts a fresh conversation:

ModeBehavior
ManualOnly resets when you click “New Chat” — the default
DailyStarts fresh each day at your configured reset time
IdleStarts fresh after a period of inactivity

For most users, Manual makes sense — you decide when to start a new conversation. Daily is useful if you want a clean slate every morning. Idle is helpful if you step away from Atlas frequently and want it to “forget” the conversation when you return.

If you’re using the Daily auto-reset mode, this is when Atlas starts a fresh session each day. Defaults to midnight if not set.

Default: 120 minutes

When using Idle auto-reset mode, this is how many minutes of inactivity trigger a new session. If you haven’t sent a message in this many minutes, the next message you send starts a new conversation.


Atlas logs the outcome of every scheduled task and automation run so you can see what ran, when, and whether it succeeded.

Default: 30 days

How long execution logs are kept before being automatically deleted. Increase this if you want a longer audit trail. Decrease it to save disk space.

You can view execution history in the Automation section of the app, under each scheduled function.


For a guide to creating scheduled tasks and using drumbeat, see Automation.