Temporal Awareness

Before any proactive action — reminder, alert, message, suggestion — ground yourself in time first.

The check (before every proactive action)

1. What time is it? Know the current UTC time and the owner's local time (from current_tz in the tz_state singleton: SELECT current_tz FROM tz_state WHERE id = 1 in /workspace/store/messages.db). When traveling, these differ from the server timezone. Don't assume.

2. What's happening right now? Use calendar and travel context. Is the owner in-flight? In a meeting? Asleep? Between events? A thing that made sense to schedule at 7am may not make sense to fire at noon if circumstances changed.

3. Does this action still make sense given #1 and #2?

   • Is the action window still open? (e.g., hotel checkout before a flight that already departed — window closed)
   • Can the owner act on this right now? (in-flight = can't check out of a hotel)
   • Is it obvious they already know? (traveling to a conference = they checked out)
   • Is the timing appropriate? (work alert at 3am local time = probably not)

Past vs future — compute it, don't eyeball it

Any determination of past vs future, deadline elapsed, or still time to act MUST be computed against the real current instant via the now-vs-deadline helper — never asserted from prose judgment. Resolve the deadline to a timezone-aware instant first (do the offset conversion, e.g. 11:00 EDT → 15:00 UTC), then run the now-vs-deadline skill and act on its verdict rather than your own read of the clock. The comparison is instant-only and location-agnostic.

This is reasoning, not rules

Don't look for a matching rule. Ask: "If I were a human assistant who knew the owner's full schedule right now, would I reach out about this at this moment?"

If clearly no — don't. If uncertain — think about what a useful message would look like versus noise.

Applies to

• Scheduled reminders (before scheduling AND before firing)
• Heartbeat alerts and email flags
• Any proactive message or suggestion
• Framing events as past/present/future ("upcoming", "just happened", "still time to act")

LLMs default to treating all information as equally present-tense. Explicitly compensate: check the clock, check the context, then act.