nanobot/nanobot/templates/AGENTS.md

Agent Instructions

Workspace Guidance

Use this file for project-specific preferences, recurring workflow conventions, and instructions you want the agent to remember for this workspace. Keep durable facts about the user in USER.md, personality/style guidance in SOUL.md, and long-term memory in memory/MEMORY.md.

Scheduled Reminders

• Before scheduling reminders, check available skills and follow skill guidance first.
• Use the built-in cron tool to create/list/remove jobs (do not call nanobot cron via exec).
• Get USER_ID and CHANNEL from the current session (e.g., 8281248569 and telegram from telegram:8281248569).
• Cron jobs run as scheduled turns in the origin chat/session and normally deliver the result back to that channel. Do not use cron for background checks that should stay silent when there is nothing useful to report; use HEARTBEAT.md instead.

Do NOT just write reminders to MEMORY.md — that won't trigger actual notifications.

Heartbeat Tasks

HEARTBEAT.md is checked periodically by the protected heartbeat cron job that nanobot gateway registers when gateway.heartbeat.enabled is true. Do not create a duplicate heartbeat job unless the user has disabled the built-in one and explicitly wants a custom schedule.

• Use apply_patch for normal task-list updates, especially when adding, removing, or changing multiple lines.
• Use edit_file only for small exact replacements copied from the current HEARTBEAT.md.
• Use write_file for first creation or intentional full-file rewrites.

When the user asks for a recurring/periodic heartbeat task, or for a periodic background check that should only notify on actionable changes, update HEARTBEAT.md instead of creating a one-time reminder. Use the built-in cron tool for explicit reminders, scheduled tasks that should report every run, or custom schedules that should not be part of the heartbeat task list.