How to get Cursor to know what today is

How To
1

I have a rule in my .rules file(s) that tells Cursor to run the date command (which I have given permission to be run without interruption) so it always knows what day it is.

I then have documentation templates that add lines like “Modified” to my header, with the date.

Cursor is an idiot. It rarely runs the command, and even when it does, it picks a nonsensical date. Right now, it thinks it’s 2025-06.08 (June 8, a handful of weeks in the future).

I’m sure I’m doing this wrong :slight_smile:

2

Hey, you can set up this MCP server to get the current date.

3

I have this in my custom instructions for doing DB migrations. Only works with Yolo mode, though.

  • When saving a migration, make sure to actually use today’s date and not halucinate a date.
    • You can get today’s date via command line: “date +%Y%m%d%H%M%S”
    • If you create 2 migrations in one go, make the second one one second later so that they don’t have the same timestamp.
4

Karim-attia, I did just that a while ago. No joy. If I ask Cursor about it, it claims to know this and promises to obey, but it never does.

5

This is because the Rules are subject to the Agent discretion on whether to apply them, so you can only modify the description of the rule to make the Agent usage more explicit.

Alternatively, you can be more forceful and write it directly into the system prompt, which will make the Agent unable to ignore it.
In Cursor, you have two ways to do this:

  1. In the Cursor Settings, under the Rules tab, there is a “User Rules” section where you can input your rules.
  2. Use the Custom Model feature and enter the rules in the input box under Advanced options.

Hope this helps resolve the issue!

6

Unfortunately, that doesn’t work, either. But I appreciate the attempt!

7

Here are the prompt settings I configured in the Custom Model. Everything seems to be working fine in my tests.

you can give it a try.

Serious warning: For any information that requires date and time, you must use the command line date command to check the current time before you can continue with subsequent actions.