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 (local by default)

Inbound messages are wrapped in an envelope like:

[Provider ... 2026-01-05 16:26 PST] message text

The timestamp in the envelope is host-local by default, with minutes precision.

You can override this with:

{
  agents: {
    defaults: {
      envelopeTimezone: "local", // "utc" | "local" | "user" | IANA timezone
      envelopeTimestamp: "on", // "on" | "off"
      envelopeElapsed: "on" // "on" | "off"
    }
  }
}

• envelopeTimezone: "utc" uses UTC.
• envelopeTimezone: "user" uses agents.defaults.userTimezone (falls back to host timezone).
• Use an explicit IANA timezone (e.g., "Europe/Vienna") for a fixed offset.
• envelopeTimestamp: "off" removes absolute timestamps from envelope headers.
• envelopeElapsed: "off" removes elapsed time suffixes (the +2m style).

Examples

Local (default):

[Signal Alice +1555 2026-01-18 00:19 PST] hello

Fixed timezone:

[Signal Alice +1555 2026-01-18 06:19 GMT+1] hello

Elapsed time:

[Signal Alice +1555 +2m 2026-01-18T05:19Z] follow-up

Tool payloads (raw provider data + normalized fields)

Tool calls (channels.discord.readMessages, channels.slack.readMessages, etc.) return raw provider timestamps. We also attach normalized fields for consistency:

• timestampMs (UTC epoch milliseconds)
• timestampUtc (ISO 8601 UTC string)

Raw provider fields are preserved.

User timezone for the system prompt

Set agents.defaults.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).

{
  agents: { defaults: { userTimezone: "America/Chicago" } }
}

The system prompt includes:

• Current Date & Time section with local time and timezone
• Time format: 12-hour or 24-hour

You can control the prompt format with agents.defaults.timeFormat (auto | 12 | 24).

See Date & Time for the full behavior and examples.