Heartbeats

Canonical guidance

• use heartbeats as liveness hints, not proofs of health
• stop the ticker when ownership ends
• define what missing a beat should trigger

Use when

• worker liveness reporting
• long-running background loops
• low-cost progress signals

Avoid

• detached heartbeat goroutines
• treating a heartbeat as full service health
• choosing intervals with no relationship to timeout policy

Preferred pattern

• a ticker-driven loop emits a best-effort pulse until ctx.Done()

Anti-pattern

• a global heartbeat goroutine with no owner and no stop path

Explanation: This is tempting because the signal seems harmless, but periodic work without lifecycle control becomes background noise or leaks.

Why

• liveness signals only help if their semantics and lifecycle are trustworthy