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System Time Plugin

The system_time plugin automatically injects a system message at the beginning of the conversation containing the system's local date and time. This allows any expert model to respond accurately to queries requiring temporal awareness (e.g. "what day is today?" or "how long until the weekend?").

The problem it solves​

By default, Large Language Models (LLMs) have no awareness of real time or access to the system clock of the machine they run on; their temporal knowledge is strictly limited to the training cutoff date.

By dynamically injecting the system date and time before processing each request, l3mcore equips all its experts with runtime temporal awareness.

How it works​

The plugin implements the override_route hook, which runs milliseconds before the normal semantic routing logic.

Request arrives at l3mcore
        |
        v
Plugin hook: override_route(messages)
        |
        ├── Injects a system message at position [0]:
        │   "System Context: The current local date and time is..."
        |
        v
Semantic router (E5) classifies the prompt normally
        |
        v
The selected expert receives the full history including the temporal context

The plugin securely modifies the messages array in memory and always returns None to allow the normal semantic routing to proceed uninterrupted.

Requirements and Configuration​

1. Enable the plugins directory​

Ensure you have the plugins/ folder enabled in the root of your l3mcore project.

2. Copy the plugin file​

Copy the system_time.py file from the official plugins repository into the plugins/ folder of your installation:

3. Customize the format (Optional)​

By default, the plugin uses the "Day, Month Day, Year, HH:MM:SS" format (for example: Tuesday, June 02, 2026, 16:22:32).

You can customize this format using Python's standard time formatting tokens (strftime) in your config/config.json file. Add a "system_time" object with the "format" parameter:

{
  "router": { ... },
  "system_time": {
    "format": "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S"
  }
}

In this example, the time will be injected as: 2026-06-02 16:22:32.

Verifying it works​

When starting the l3mcore server, the system log should confirm that the plugin loaded successfully:

INFO - Loaded plugin: system_time

When a query enters, the plugin silently injects the message and logs the action:

INFO - system_time: Inyectada fecha y hora actual del sistema (Tuesday, June 02, 2026, 16:22:32) en la peticion.

Behavior with different inputs​

InputResult
Normal messages listInjects the temporal message at index 0 of the list and returns None.
Empty or missing historyBypasses silently and returns None.
Malformed messages parameter (not a list)The plugin catches the error gracefully, logs a warning, and continues.