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Put today's date in the system prompt #62

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ryan wants to merge 1 commits from feat/prompt-current-date into main
pull from: feat/prompt-current-date
merge into: ryan:main
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ryan commented 2026-10-12 18:25:42 -04:00
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Problem

Nothing in the system prompt tells the model today's date; it has to remember to call the get_current_date tool. When asked about 'October' with no year, it skipped the tool and filled in 2025 from training data (the Qwen model's knowledge cutoff), producing wrong spending dates.

The same prompt hardcodes Simba as 'approximately 9 years 5 months old', which was only true around January 2026.

Fix

  • build_system_prompt_with_memories (memory.py) now prepends today's date in Eastern time to every prompt, with a nudge to interpret relative/yearless dates against it. Covers all channels (web chat, iMessage, WhatsApp) and every date-related question (YNAB, meals, journal, calendar).
  • prompts.py: removed the hardcoded age; age is computed from his birth date (Aug 8, 2016).

All 189 tests pass.

## Problem Nothing in the system prompt tells the model today's date; it has to remember to call the get_current_date tool. When asked about 'October' with no year, it skipped the tool and filled in 2025 from training data (the Qwen model's knowledge cutoff), producing wrong spending dates. The same prompt hardcodes Simba as 'approximately 9 years 5 months old', which was only true around January 2026. ## Fix - build_system_prompt_with_memories (memory.py) now prepends today's date in Eastern time to every prompt, with a nudge to interpret relative/yearless dates against it. Covers all channels (web chat, iMessage, WhatsApp) and every date-related question (YNAB, meals, journal, calendar). - prompts.py: removed the hardcoded age; age is computed from his birth date (Aug 8, 2016). All 189 tests pass.
ryan added 1 commit 2026-10-12 18:25:43 -04:00
Put today's date (ET) in system prompt; stop hardcoding Simba's age af33463f98 
The model had no idea of the current date unless it remembered to call
the get_current_date tool, so relative/yearless dates (e.g. 'October')
got filled in from training data. build_system_prompt_with_memories now
prepends today's date (America/New_York) to every prompt, covering all
channels (web chat, iMessage, WhatsApp) and all date-related questions.

Simba's age is now computed from his birth date instead of a stale
hardcoded 'approximately 9 years 5 months'.
This pull request has changes conflicting with the target branch.
  • blueprints/conversation/memory.py
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From your project repository, check out a new branch and test the changes.
git fetch -u origin feat/prompt-current-date:feat/prompt-current-date
git checkout feat/prompt-current-date
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Reference: ryan/simbarag#62
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