Include day of week in system prompt date
Resolved 💬 3 comments Opened Jan 15, 2026 by tomyan-ki Closed Feb 28, 2026
Problem
The system prompt includes the date in the <env> block:
Today's date: 2026-01-15
However, Claude sometimes gets the day of week wrong when reasoning about dates (e.g., saying "Wednesday 15th" when it's actually Thursday). This leads to errors in date-sensitive tasks like journaling.
Proposed Solution
Include the day of week in the date:
Today's date: Thursday, 2026-01-15
Or even more human-readable:
Today is Thursday, January 15, 2026
Workaround
Currently using a UserPromptSubmit hook to inject the day:
{
"hooks": {
"UserPromptSubmit": [
{
"matcher": "",
"hooks": [
{
"type": "command",
"command": "echo \"Today is $(date '+%A, %d %B %Y')\""
}
]
}
]
}
}
This works but should be unnecessary - the system should provide unambiguous date context.
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