Background & proactivity

This tab keeps askTheodor working when you’re not. It has two parts: ✨ Proactive Theodor, an hourly auto-review that surfaces suggestions on its own, and the background daemon, a small OS-level service that keeps your Plans, Routines, and Theodor’s heartbeat firing even after you close the app window.

✨ Proactive Theodor

A status chip shows On or Off (off by default). When on, Theodor reviews your workspace about once an hour and surfaces suggestions aimed at growing your value and profit — for you to approve, discuss, or dismiss. Genuinely low-risk moves he just makes and shows you afterward. Ideas land in Theodor’s bridge (💡 Suggestions) and in an hourly popup.

• ⏰ Hourly auto-review button — toggles the feature on or off. Default: off.

This is the same setting as the auto-review toggle on Theodor’s bridge; flipping it in either place keeps both in sync. It pairs with the daemon below, so reviews keep firing even with the window closed.

Pair proactivity with the daemon

Proactive Theodor on its own only runs while the app is open. Install the background daemon below too, and the hourly review keeps going overnight with the window closed — that’s the combination that makes “proactive” actually proactive.

Background daemon

Without this, everything pauses the moment you quit the app. With it installed, your Plans advance on schedule, your Routines fire on their cron triggers, and Theodor’s heartbeat runs reliably overnight.

A status chip reports the state: Not installed, Installed (inactive), or Installed + active. Below it, the manifest path shows where the service file lives. The controls:

• Install background daemon — writes the OS service and starts it (shown when not installed).
• Remove background daemon — uninstalls the service (shown when installed).
• Reinstall (refresh path) — rewrites the service to point at the current app binary. Use this after you move or update the app so the daemon launches the right copy.
• Refresh status — re-reads the current state.

How it works on each OS

• macOS — installs a LaunchAgent plist in ~/Library/LaunchAgents/, loaded via launchctl. Survives logout and reboot; logs to ~/Library/Logs/asktheodor-daemon.log.
• Linux — installs a systemd user unit at ~/.config/systemd/user/asktheodor.service, enabled and started via systemctl --user. Survives logout if you’ve enabled user-service lingering; otherwise it restarts at your next login.
• Windows — creates a Scheduled Task named askTheodor Daemon that triggers at user logon.

The daemon launches the app with a --background flag so it runs without taking a dock or taskbar slot. Quitting the foreground window doesn’t stop it — the daemon keeps the process alive in the background.

Supported on macOS, Linux, and Windows

If your operating system isn’t supported, the panel says so and the install button is hidden. The daemon currently targets macOS, Linux, and Windows.

In practice

The daemon is what makes “scheduled” actually mean scheduled. Without it, cron Routines and Plans only advance while the window is open — so an 08:00 briefing on a laptop you closed at 18:00 simply doesn’t happen. If you’ve set up Routines and they aren’t running, this is the first thing to check.

Set a budget before enabling either. Both features exist to do work while you’re not watching, which is exactly the situation a global hard-stop budget is for. Thirty seconds in Cost & budgets first.

Proactivity has an ongoing cost. An hourly review is an hourly model call whether or not anything interesting happened. That’s a real line item on a metered provider, and a fair reason to leave it off until you have budgets in place — or to point Theodor at a local model.

Judge proactivity after one week. Turn it on, read the suggestions for seven days, and count how many were genuinely useful. If it’s more than a couple, keep it. If it’s noise, switch it off and rely on a Monday-briefing Routine instead — that’s a legitimate outcome, not a failure.

The daemon survives quitting the window, which is the point — and also means “I closed the app” is not the same as “nothing is running.” The autonomy kill-switch, not the window, is what stops work.

🎓 Learn it hands-on: Proactive Theodor · Routines: work on a schedule

Terms in this page

• Proactive Theodor — an optional mode where Theodor reviews your workspace about once an hour and offers suggestions without being asked. Off by default.
• Auto-review — that hourly pass Theodor makes over your workspace to generate suggestions.
• Suggestion — a proposed action Theodor surfaces for you to approve, discuss, or dismiss; low-risk ones he performs and reports.
• Theodor’s bridge — Theodor’s own panel in the app, where suggestions (💡) collect.
• Background daemon — a small operating-system service that keeps askTheodor running after you close the window, so scheduled work continues.
• Heartbeat — askTheodor’s recurring background tick that keeps Plans and Routines advancing.
• Plan — a multi-step project a worker works through over time.
• Routine — a scheduled job that runs on a recurring trigger.
• Cron / trigger — a schedule (e.g. “every day at 9am”) that says when a Routine should fire.
• LaunchAgent — the macOS mechanism for running a background service per user.
• systemd user unit — the Linux mechanism for running a background service under your user account.
• Scheduled Task — the Windows mechanism for running a program automatically (here, at logon).
• Manifest — the service definition file the daemon installs; its path is shown so you can find it.
• --background flag — the option the daemon uses to launch the app headlessly, without a dock/taskbar window.