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Always-on Abilities run as Background Daemons — they start automatically when a call begins and stay alive for the whole session. No hotword, no trigger. They work even when the Personality is in sleep mode.

What’s possible

  • Background polling — check a file or API on a timer
  • Proactive notifications — interrupt the conversation when something fires
  • Scheduled tasks — alarms and time-based events
  • Ambient monitoring — note-taking, summarization, conversation watching

Minimal daemon template

The file must be named background.py — no other filename will be detected.

Three patterns to know

Standalone Daemon

Only background.py. Continuous monitoring, logging, note-taking.

Interactive + Daemon

main.py + background.py. Coordinate via shared file storage. Alarm is the canonical example.

Ambient Listener

Background daemon + hot mic + Deepgram. Room-aware Ability that never sleeps.

Next steps