clawdbot/docs/concepts/timezone.md

summary, read_when

summary	read_when
Timezone handling for agents, envelopes, and prompts	You need to understand how timestamps are normalized for the model Configuring the user timezone for system prompts

Timezones

Clawdbot standardizes timestamps so the model sees a single reference time.

Message envelopes (UTC)

Inbound messages are wrapped in an envelope like:

[Provider ... 2026-01-05T21:26Z] message text

The timestamp in the envelope is always UTC, with minutes precision.

Tool payloads (raw provider data)

Tool calls (discord.readMessages, slack.readMessages, etc.) return raw provider timestamps. These are typically UTC ISO strings (Discord) or UTC epoch strings (Slack). We do not rewrite them.

User timezone for the system prompt

Set agent.userTimezone to tell the model the user's local time zone. If it is unset, Clawdbot resolves the host timezone at runtime (no config write).

{
  agent: { userTimezone: "America/Chicago" }
}

The system prompt includes:

• User timezone: America/Chicago
• Current user time: 2026-01-05 15:26