Our review

A date utility that provides current time context, offsets, weekdays, and diary paths to avoid mental date calculations.

Strengths

Eliminates mental date math errors
Offers multiple views (day, week, month)
Handles diary paths with existence checks

Limitations

No advanced timezone support
Fixed date format (English)
Requires Unix environment with bash

When to use it

Use this skill at session start or whenever you need to reason about dates in your scripts or files.

When not to use it

Avoid it for complex date arithmetic such as business days or timezone differences.

name: dates description: Date calculations and context. Use instead of mental date math. allowed-tools: Bash(.claude/skills/dates/scripts/date_context.sh:*)

Date Context Skill

Simple date helper to avoid mental date calculations. Use at session start and whenever working with dates.

Quick Start

.claude/skills/dates/scripts/date_context.sh

Output:

Current time: 14:32 GMT

Today: Monday 12 January 2026
Yesterday: Sunday 11 January 2026
Tomorrow: Tuesday 13 January 2026

Late night warning: If run between midnight and 3am, shows a warning that "today" might mean yesterday from the user's perspective.

Commands

Basic (default)

.claude/skills/dates/scripts/date_context.sh basic
# Today, yesterday, tomorrow

Week View

.claude/skills/dates/scripts/date_context.sh week
# This week Mon-Sun

Offset

.claude/skills/dates/scripts/date_context.sh offset +3   # 3 days from now
.claude/skills/dates/scripts/date_context.sh offset -7   # 7 days ago

Find Weekday

.claude/skills/dates/scripts/date_context.sh weekday Friday
# This Friday: Friday 17 January 2026
# Next Friday: Friday 24 January 2026

Month Boundaries

.claude/skills/dates/scripts/date_context.sh month
# First and last day of current month

Diary Paths

.claude/skills/dates/scripts/date_context.sh diary       # Today's diary path
.claude/skills/dates/scripts/date_context.sh diary -1    # Yesterday's diary path
.claude/skills/dates/scripts/date_context.sh diary -5    # Last 5 days with existence check
.claude/skills/dates/scripts/date_context.sh diary last  # Most recent existing diary

Example output for -5:

Recent diary entries (last 5 days):
  ✓ diary/2026/01/12-Mon.md (Monday 12 Jan)
  ✓ diary/2026/01/11-Sun.md (Sunday 11 Jan)
  ✗ diary/2026/01/10-Sat.md (Saturday 10 Jan) [MISSING]
  ✗ diary/2026/01/09-Fri.md (Friday 09 Jan) [MISSING]
  ✓ diary/2026/01/08-Thu.md (Thursday 08 Jan)

Usage Notes

Always use this instead of calculating dates mentally
Run at session start to establish date context
Use offset for scheduling tasks N days out
Use diary to get correct diary file paths

Date Context

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