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System prompt 'Current Date & Time' only injects timezone, not the actual date #28194
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wakqasahmed/openclaw
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Description
Problem
The ## Current Date & Time section in the system prompt only contains the timezone, not the actual date/time:
## Current Date & Time
Time zone: Asia/Shanghai
Without an explicit date, the model falls back to guessing based on training data, resulting in wildly incorrect dates (e.g. guessing "2025-07-19" when the actual date is "2026-02-26").
Impact
- Daily memory files (
memory/YYYY-MM-DD.md) get created with wrong filenames - Date references in documents are incorrect
- Two different sessions on the same day guessed two different wrong dates (2025-07-19 and 2025-07-27), showing the behavior is non-deterministic
Expected Behavior
The system prompt should inject the full current date and time, e.g.:
## Current Date & Time
Friday, February 27th, 2026 — 9:04 AM (Asia/Shanghai)
Workaround
Added a rule in AGENTS.md to run date or session_status as the first step in every session to confirm the actual date. This works but adds an extra tool call to every session.
Reproduction
- Start a new session (e.g.
/newin Telegram, or a Discord channel session) - Ask the agent to create a daily note for today
- Observe the filename — it may use a date from ~mid-2025 instead of the actual date
Environment
- OpenClaw running on macOS (arm64)
- Model: claude-opus-4-6
- Channel: Telegram + Discord
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