Troubleshooting

Agent Using the Wrong Time or Day?

If your agent says “good morning” at night, sends reminders late, or uses the wrong date, this is usually a timezone mismatch — and it’s fixable in minutes.

Timezone drift is one of those bugs that feels random until you know where to look. Most of the time, your agent is working correctly — just with the wrong timezone context.

Important: You can have the right timezone in one place and the wrong one in another (host machine, app settings, or prompt context). Any mismatch can cause weird behavior.

Symptoms of timezone mismatch

Agent references the wrong day (“tomorrow” when it’s already today for you).
Scheduled reminders fire an hour early/late.
Greetings feel wrong (“good morning” late at night).
Heartbeats trigger during quiet hours.

Fast recovery checklist

Confirm your expected timezone (example: America/New_York).
Check your machine timezone and clock are correct.
Check your agent/workspace timezone setting, if available.
Start a fresh session (/new) after changing timezone config.
Run a quick verification prompt (below).

Known-good verification prompt

Tell me your current local date, day of week, and time. Then tell me the timezone you're using for this session. If uncertain, say exactly what setting I should fix.

Expected result: The reported day/time matches your real local time. If it doesn’t, fix timezone config first before troubleshooting anything else.

Common root causes

Host OS timezone changed or never set correctly.
Running in Docker/container with UTC while expecting local time.
Old session context still using previous timezone assumptions.
Prompt instructions conflict (example: “act in UTC” left over in SOUL.md/AGENTS.md).

For reminder-heavy workflows

Always mention timezone when scheduling important reminders.
Prefer absolute times with timezone, not vague “later tonight.”
After setting a reminder, ask the agent to repeat back: date, time, timezone.

Avoid this trap: Don’t debug model quality or prompt style until time is correct. Wrong timezone can make good prompts look broken.

Support packet (copy/paste)

Timezone issue report: - Expected timezone: [e.g., America/New_York] - Agent reported time/day: [paste] - Your actual local time/day: [paste] - Fresh session started after config change: yes/no - Is this in Docker/container: yes/no - Exact reminder mismatch (if any): [paste]