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[FEATURE]: heartbeat tool in v2, structured use case of background shell #50045
Description
Feature hasn't been suggested before.
- I have verified this feature I'm about to request hasn't been suggested before.
Describe the enhancement you want to request
I've been using v2 recently and it's wonderful, the background shell is very helpful. I noticed an emerging use case that my agents often use the background shell as a heartbeat or timer (sleep 2000 && echo "do something").
I think it would be better if we can have this as a dedicated tool. This should make the transcript more structured, and make it more ergonomic, especially when paired with some UI element.
Similar to #50041, but that one's requesting a blocking tool. What I observed is a non blocking use case, piggybacked on the background shell in v2. #20874 #24888 are similar but are closed.
Activity
opencodejr commentedon Oct 28, 2026
Thanks for the request, @sghng!
If I've got it right, you're asking for a dedicated non-blocking timer/heartbeat tool, so agents no longer have to fake one with a background shell like
sleep 2000 && echo "do something". That would give a clearer entry in the transcript and room for UI such as a countdown.These issues are related:
waittool with a countdown in the footer. You've already pointed out how yours differs.sleeptimer being lost when idle project services were cleaned up, so a dedicated timer would need to survive that too.The maintainers will consider it.