time-awareness git:20260911.9411cbeA

Immutable. This exact content is served forever at /api/v1/blob/47dee6401ef471d7.

---
name: time-awareness
description: Use when a claude-timestamp system reminder says how long a turn has run, that a tool call was slow, or that a conversation or project is resumed after a gap; when the user asks how long something took, when they started, or where their time went; and before writing a date into notes, memory, a commit or a document.
user-invocable: false
---

# Time awareness

claude-timestamp tells you about time in short system reminders. They state
facts and nothing else. This is what to do with them.

## The reminders

**`Message sent at local time 10:37:21 CEST, after a 3h break`** arrives with
every prompt. It is when the user pressed enter, not the time now.

**`Turn running 30m04s (prompt sent 10:37:21); now 11:07:25 CEST.`** means the
turn you are in has run that long without hearing from the user.

- Check that the work still matches what was asked. Drift costs less to catch
  now than at the end.
- From the second one onward, consider finishing the step you are on and
  reporting back instead of opening new scope. That is a judgement call: a
  long job the user asked you to run unattended should keep going.

**`That Bash call took 2m14s.`** means one call was slow. Before running the
same thing again:

- run it with `run_in_background` and keep working meanwhile,
- narrow it: one test file, one package, a filter, or
- reuse the output you already have, when nothing it depends on has changed.

**`Previous session in this project ended 14h ago (Thu 20:12:05).`** and
**`Resuming this conversation; last activity 14h ago (Thu 20:12:05).`** mean
that what you knew before the gap may be stale. Before building on it, check
what could have moved: the branch and `git status`, running servers, open
pull requests and CI runs, and files the user may have edited meanwhile.

## Time in general

- During a long turn, get the current time from `date`. The last stamp in the
  conversation is when the user spoke.
- Refer to earlier messages by the time on their stamp ("the change you asked
  for at 10:37") rather than "earlier" or "just now".
- Write absolute dates in anything that outlives the conversation: "Thursday"
  becomes 2026-09-10.
- Answer questions about duration from measurement, never from how long the
  conversation feels.

## Measuring

This session so far:

```bash
bash "${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/../../hooks/scripts/setup.sh" --session
```

In both reports, **waiting** is the time the user spent waiting for your
replies, from each prompt to its answer. **Away** is the breaks between one
of your replies and the user's next prompt. Neither is time you spent
waiting for the user.

Recorded sessions, all of them, the last week, or one project:

```bash
bash "${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/../../hooks/scripts/setup.sh" --stats
bash "${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/../../hooks/scripts/setup.sh" --stats --since=7d
bash "${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/../../hooks/scripts/setup.sh" --stats --project=NAME
```

Sessions carry a project name only when the user turned on `PROJECTS`;
without it `--stats` shows no per-project breakdown. Tool timings are kept per
tool name, not per command, and only with `TOOL_TIMING` on. "How long did
`npm test` take" therefore has an answer only in the slow-call reminders
already in this conversation.