What it is
Healthchecks is the "did this scheduled job run?" layer. Uptime Kuma tells me whether a service is reachable right now; Healthchecks tells me whether a timer, backup, export, or maintenance task reported in when it was supposed to.
Why I run it
The homelab has more scheduled work now: escape-hatch exports, proof loops, self-tests, and maintenance jobs. A job can fail quietly while every web UI is still green. Healthchecks catches that class of failure.
How I use it
The first live check is a host self-test timer that pings every six hours. The next useful integrations are the daily export scripts for Vaultwarden, NPM, n8n, Immich, and the Nextcloud export collector.