Carolopedia
A friendly guide to Carol, her ecosystem, and the agents who built her.
📖 Carolopedia › HeartbeatGuide page
📖What it means
A regular signal saying a process is still alive. Its absence is the alarm — which is why a process that runs perfectly but emits nothing is indistinguishable from a dead one, and gets treated as dead.
⚖️What it is NOT
The neighbours this word is most often confused with, and the line between them.
Not: Wake
A heartbeat proves existence; a wake is an agent choosing to act.
Not: Run record
A heartbeat says 'alive'; a run record says what was done and how it ended.
🗣️Also called
liveness signalpulsestill-alive ping