Bug Description

The pre-compaction memory flush instructs the AI agent to write to memory/YYYY-MM-DD.md, but the agent writes files with the wrong year (e.g., 2025-06-27.md instead of 2026-02-15.md). This happens because the agent has no reliable way to determine the current date during memory flush — the system prompt only includes the timezone, not the actual date.

Root Cause (two issues)

1. buildTimeSection() drops the computed userTime

File: dist/agents/system-prompt.js, line 37-41

function buildTimeSection(params) {
    if (!params.userTimezone) return [];
    return ["## Current Date & Time", `Time zone: ${params.userTimezone}`, ""];
}

userTime (e.g., "Saturday, February 15th, 2026 — 6:37 PM") is correctly computed by formatUserTime() in date-time.js and passed through the entire call chain (compact.js:236 → system-prompt.js:25 → buildAgentSystemPrompt()), but buildTimeSection() only renders the timezone string and silently ignores the actual date/time value.

The agent's system prompt ends up with:

## Current Date & Time
Time zone: America/New_York

...instead of including the formatted date.

2. Memory flush prompt uses literal YYYY-MM-DD placeholder

File: dist/auto-reply/reply/memory-flush.js, line 6-9

export const DEFAULT_MEMORY_FLUSH_PROMPT = [
    "Pre-compaction memory flush.",
    "Store durable memories now (use memory/YYYY-MM-DD.md; create memory/ if needed).",
    // ...
].join(" ");

YYYY-MM-DD is passed as a literal string to the AI model. Without the actual date in the system prompt, the model must guess the year from its training data cutoff, which produces incorrect filenames.

Note: Cron jobs are unaffected because cron/isolated-agent/run.js (lines 170-172) correctly injects the date into the command body:

const formattedTime = formatUserTime(new Date(now), userTimezone, userTimeFormat);
const timeLine = `Current time: ${formattedTime} (${userTimezone})`;
commandBody = `${base}\n${timeLine}`.trim();

Impact

On my system, 12 memory files were created with wrong filenames over the course of a single day. The model hallucinated dates ranging from 2025-01-30 to 2025-09-21 for content that was actually written on 2026-02-15. The month/day also varies randomly because the model invents plausible dates from its training data.

Suggested Fix

Fix 1: Include userTime in the system prompt

function buildTimeSection(params) {
    if (!params.userTimezone) return [];
    const lines = ["## Current Date & Time"];
    if (params.userTime) lines.push(`Current time: ${params.userTime}`);
    lines.push(`Time zone: ${params.userTimezone}`, "");
    return lines;
}

Fix 2: Substitute YYYY-MM-DD before sending to the agent

In agent-runner-memory.js, resolve the placeholder before passing it as the prompt:

const today = new Date().toISOString().split("T")[0];
const resolvedPrompt = memoryFlushSettings.prompt.replaceAll("YYYY-MM-DD", today);

Both fixes are two-line changes. Fix 1 is the more general correctness fix; Fix 2 is the belt-and-suspenders defense for memory flush specifically.

Environment

• OpenClaw version: 2026.2.14
• OS: Windows 11
• Node.js: v22.22.0
• Primary model: anthropic/claude-opus-4-5

Workaround

Override the memoryFlush.prompt in openclaw.json to force the agent to run a system command for the date:

"memoryFlush": {
    "prompt": "Write any lasting notes to a dated file in memory/. CRITICAL: First run this command to get today's date: powershell -Command \"Get-Date -Format yyyy-MM-dd\" — then use THAT exact output as the filename. Do NOT guess or assume the date or year. Reply with NO_REPLY if nothing to store.",
    "systemPrompt": "Pre-compaction memory flush. You MUST verify today's date via a system command before writing any memory file. Never assume the year."
}