Heartbeat
The continuous per-actor nervous system of the sensing layer. The term is used in two complementary senses: the Machine Heartbeat is the structured stream of observations an AI expert emits as its sensors trip; the Human Heartbeat is the symmetric stream produced by humans, comprising questions, proposals, daily reflections, and the weekly pulse. Both are continuous; both deposit into the same sensing layer. Not to be confused with the Morning Brief, which is the daily role-aware briefing that consumes from these streams. (Strategy as Infrastructure, Ch 15)
Why it matters
The term ‘heartbeat’ was deliberately redefined during the book’s rewrite. Previously it referred to the daily briefing; now it names the continuous underlying stream that the daily briefing consumes. The rename was not cosmetic — it reflects the architectural insight that the value is in the continuous stream (always on, depositing observations), not in the periodic consumption event (which is just one of five coherence tiers). See Machine Heartbeat and Human Heartbeat for the two halves.
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