now-vs-deadline Skill

Process steps in order. Do not skip ahead.

Compares a deadline against the actual current instant and returns past/future plus the delta in integer seconds. Use it whenever you would otherwise assert that a deadline has elapsed or that there is still time to act — rules/temporal-awareness.md requires the comparison to be computed here, not inferred.

Step 1 — Resolve the deadline to a timezone-aware instant

Do the offset conversion first (e.g. 11:00 EDT -> 2026-06-12T15:00:00Z, or pass 2026-06-12T11:00:00-04:00). The deadline must carry a timezone offset (Z or +HH:MM); a naive value is rejected at exit 2.

python3 /home/node/.claude/skills/tessl__now-vs-deadline/scripts/now-vs-deadline.py --deadline "2026-06-12T15:00:00Z"

The comparison is location-agnostic — it compares instants only; the result is independent of the offset you used. No physical location or current_tz lookup happens here. Mapping relative phrasings (today/now/сейчас/here) into a local frame stays in the trusted tile. Proceed immediately to Step 2.

Step 2 — Use the JSON result; do not override it

The script prints a single-line JSON payload to stdout:

{
  "now": "2026-06-12T13:10:50Z",
  "deadline": "2026-06-12T15:00:00Z",
  "relation": "future",
  "delta_seconds": 6550,
  "delta_text": "1h 49m from now",
  "deadline_elapsed": false,
  "still_time_to_act": true,
  "error": null
}

Field contract:

• relation is past / future / now — authoritative for past/future classification.
• delta_seconds is the delta as integer seconds, truncated toward zero.
• The sign of delta_seconds is meaningful only when non-zero: >0 future, <0 past.
• A sub-second past/future delta reads 0 in delta_seconds while relation still says past or future. Never classify from delta_seconds alone.
• Read relation / deadline_elapsed / still_time_to_act and act on them directly — do not re-derive past/future from your own read of the clock.

Exit 0 on success. Exit 2 on a usage error (missing, unparseable, or naive --deadline) with the diagnostic on stderr and no JSON. Finish here.