How Does Pulse Work?

Pulse investigates your current community setup, asks clarifying questions about your goals, then provides specific action plans you can review and implement. It understands what's already configured in your community and makes recommendations based on your objectives.

You can find Pulse in the top right corner of your admin dashboard:

What Pulse Can Do

Pulse can both advise (answer questions, explain how things work, suggest strategy) and act (build things inside your community). Before any action is taken, Pulse shows you exactly what it plans to do and asks for your confirmation so nothing changes without your approval.

You can upload files into Pulse as we cover on What You Can Upload to Pulse (and What Pulse Does With It).

Pulse helps you accomplish common community-building tasks through natural conversation:

Setup & Configuration

• Create Courses with lessons and assignments
• Set up membership Offers and pricing tiers
• Build discussion channels and voice rooms
• Design custom onboarding flows
• Create Documents and knowledge base sections

Member Growth

• Configure Sign Up Links and landing pages
• Set up Waitlists for pre-launch communities
• Create Events with ticketing options
• Build automated Workflows for engagement

Access & Revenue

• Configure groups and access controls
• Troubleshoot member access issues
• Optimize payment and monetization setup
• Audit your community structure

Advise on:

• Community structure and best practices
• Course design and curriculum planning
• Pricing strategy for offers
• Automation ideas for member engagement
• Platform limitations and how to work around them

What Pulse Cannot Do

• Manage Pulse settings itself (enable/disable Pulse, change data access, edit memories) — go to Pulse Settings directly
• Send chat messages (real-time messages in chat channels)
• Create comments on posts or react to posts
• Change user roles — go to Members Settings
• Set up a custom domain — go to Custom Domain settings
• Move courses between sections — go to the Courses page
• Process payment migrations — contact Heartbeat support
• Reorder the main sidebar layout (Feed, Channels, Courses, etc.) — the top-level order is fixed; Pulse can hide/show items but not reorder them

When you ask Pulse to do something outside its scope, it will tell you and point you to where you can do it yourself. You can also find a list of best practices and tips here.

Pulse Settings

Configure how Pulse works in your community by going to Settings > System > Pulse.

Enable or Disable Pulse

Toggle Pulse ON/OFF to control whether the AI assistant is available in your community admin dashboard.

Member PII Access

Allow Pulse to access member personally identifiable information (PII) such as names and email addresses. This helps Pulse provide more personalized assistance but should be enabled only if appropriate for your community's privacy requirements.

Member Content Access

Allow Pulse to read member-generated content such as posts and messages. This enables Pulse to provide context-aware assistance and help with content moderation.

Custom Instructions

Provide custom instructions, context, or guidelines for Pulse. This helps Pulse understand your community's specific needs, terminology, and preferences.

Learn more here: Pulse Just Got a Lot More Personal: Introducing Custom Instructions

Memories

These are facts and context that Pulse has learned from conversations with admins. You can review and remove any memories that are no longer relevant or accurate.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can my community members see or use Pulse? No, only community admins can access Pulse. Members do not have access to this assistant.

Does Pulse learn from my community's content? Pulse learns about your community's structure in real time as you interact with it (courses, channels, groups, etc.) but does not train on your community's content unless you enable Member Content Access. It's an expert at Heartbeat's platform, not your specific content or member discussions.

What information does Pulse have access to? Pulse can see your community's configuration and structure to make relevant recommendations. Access to member PII and content is controlled through the settings toggles and is disabled by default.

Do I retain ownership of AI-generated outputs created with Pulse? Yes. You retain full ownership of all outputs generated through Pulse, and Heartbeat assigns all rights in those outputs to you. Heartbeat does not claim any license to reuse, commercialize, or redistribute them.

Are my prompts and outputs used to train AI models? No. Heartbeat does not train on your data. Pulse routes requests through paid model providers via OpenRouter, and our account is configured to block any provider that trains on prompts.

Can I opt out of data retention? Heartbeat stores conversation history to power features like multi-turn chat and memory. Upstream model providers may retain prompts for up to 30–55 days for safety and compliance purposes and not training. We cannot disable provider-side retention, but no provider in our routing pool trains on your data.

Are my Pulse conversations confidential? Heartbeat employees may review Pulse conversations to improve the product. Conversations are not shared publicly or with third parties beyond the infrastructure providers that power the service.