> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.roark.ai/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Health check

> A minimal probe call on a schedule that verifies your agent answers, speaks and stays responsive

## Why this is a common failure point

Voice agents fail silently. A rotated API key, an expired phone number, a provider outage or a bad deploy can leave the agent answering calls with silence, or not answering at all, and nobody finds out until a customer complains. Dashboards of past calls won't warn you: if calls stop connecting, there is nothing new to look at.

## How Roark tests it

A health check calls your agent on a schedule with Roark's fixed probe flow and checks the basics: it answered, it spoke, and it responded quickly. Because the probe never changes, every check is comparable with the last, and a failure alerts you before your callers notice.

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## Setting it up

The probe call is fixed, so there are no flows to pick. Choose the agents and the cadence (hourly by default). Health checks have their own home under **Health checks**, which links straight to this template.

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## What it measures

The template seeds these, and you can add or remove metrics in **Advanced** before running.

| Measure                 | What it tells you                                                     |
| :---------------------- | :-------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Agent Spoke (check)** | Whether the agent said anything at all. The bluntest liveness signal. |
| **Time to First Word**  | Time from the call connecting to the first spoken word.               |
| **Response Time**       | Time between speaking turns.                                          |

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## What to look for

* **Alert on failure.** Set an alert on the plan so a failed probe reaches you, not just the dashboard.
* **Watch time to first word drift.** A slow climb over days often comes before an outage.

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## Over the API

Run it with `POST /v1/simulation/run` and `"template": "health-check"`. `GET /v1/simulation/template` lists what each template accepts.