How Your Agent Works

4 min readUpdated 2026-07-18

Key Takeaway

Your agent runs on its own dedicated server and works through 6 loops, including an awareness sweep that looks for new leads every 4 hours. It defaults to Gemini Flash and Flash-Lite for almost everything, with Claude Sonnet as a fallback for tough reasoning when Gemini is down.

Your AI agent runs nonstop on a server that's yours alone. It works through six loops that each handle a different job, and it picks the right AI model for each one automatically.

Dedicated Infrastructure

Your agent runs on its own virtual private server (VPS). It's never shared with another customer.

That gets you three things:

  • Privacy: your data never mixes with anyone else's
  • Performance: consistent resources, not a shared pool
  • Isolation: a problem on one agent can't spill over to another

The 6 Loops

Your agent runs six loops at once, each on its own schedule.

Loop 1: Inbox Monitor (every 2 minutes)

Checks for inbound email replies from leads. Classifies each response by sentiment and updates lead status automatically.

Loop 2: IPC Watcher (every 5 seconds)

Handles real-time communication with the LeadClaw web app: processing commands, reporting status, syncing data.

Loop 3: Task Scheduler (every 60 seconds)

Manages the outreach queue. Picks leads to contact, drafts emails, schedules sends, and handles follow-ups.

Loop 4: Awareness Sweep (every 4 hours)

Looks for new leads that match your active goals, and keeps an eye on what needs your attention.

Loop 5: Owner Message Monitor

Your messages get pushed to your agent instantly. A backup check every 5 minutes catches anything missed during a restart.

Loop 6: Heartbeat (every 2 hours)

Reports your agent's health to the dashboard: uptime, memory usage, active work, error rate. This is what makes the status pill on your dashboard pulse when your agent is active.

AI Models

Your agent uses more than one AI model, and it routes each task to whichever one fits best.

  • Gemini Flash: the default for most of the work. Drafting emails, running goals, researching leads, writing reports.
  • Gemini Flash-Lite: cheap and fast, used for classification. Sentiment analysis, lead scoring, that kind of thing.
  • Claude Sonnet: the fallback for complex reasoning when Gemini is unavailable. Simple classification falls back to Claude Haiku instead.

Gemini handles almost everything, day to day. Claude only steps in when it has to.

Ready to automate your outreach?

LeadClaw's AI agent handles lead generation, personalized emails, and follow-ups — so you can focus on closing deals.