timezone

Timezone

Detecting user's local time at session start

When to use

• Always at session start (automatically via hook or manually)
• When time conversion is needed (calendar, calls, deadlines)
• When Claude displays any time to the user

How to determine current time

date '+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S %Z %z'

This gives the exact time, timezone and UTC offset from the system clock.

Rules

1. NEVER guess the timezone -- always query the system clock
2. NEVER convert manually -- use Python datetime with zoneinfo
3. Always display times in the user's local timezone (determined from the system clock)
4. Google Calendar API returns time in the event creation timezone -- always convert to local

Time conversion (Python)

from datetime import datetime
from zoneinfo import ZoneInfo
import subprocess

# Determine timezone from system
result = subprocess.run(['date', '+%z'], capture_output=True, text=True)
offset = result.stdout.strip()  # e.g. "+0800"

# Or use timezone directly
local_tz = ZoneInfo('Asia/Makassar')  # WITA, UTC+8

# Convert from another timezone
event_time = datetime.fromisoformat('2026-02-16T13:30:00+01:00')  # CET
local_time = event_time.astimezone(local_tz)
print(local_time.strftime('%H:%M %Z'))  # -> 20:30 WITA

Current configuration

• Location: Bali, Indonesia
• Timezone: WITA (UTC+8), Asia/Makassar
• IMPORTANT: Indonesia has 3 timezones (WIB +7, WITA +8, WIT +9). Bali = WITA.

Related skills

• daily-briefing -- displays event times
• show-today -- deadlines