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System prompt 'Current Date & Time' only injects timezone, not the actual date #28194

@xiguawang

Description

@xiguawang

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

  1. Start a new session (e.g. /new in Telegram, or a Discord channel session)
  2. Ask the agent to create a daily note for today
  3. 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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