Durations and time zones

Writing a duration

Anywhere Arclo asks for a length of time — a mute, a giveaway, a poll, a cooldown, a temporary role — it accepts the same shorthand.

• Units may be written short (m) or long (minutes), with or without a space.
• Parts can be combined in any order: 1d 6h and 6h1d are the same 30 hours.
• Something unreadable is rejected with a message rather than guessed at.

How Arclo writes one back

Durations are printed in the largest unit that says them honestly. Exactly seven days is 7 days, never 6 days 24 hours. Anything that is not a whole number of one unit gets the two largest that fit — 5 years 8 months — because a third would be noise. Under a minute, seconds are the only honest answer.

Absolute times

Where a specific moment is wanted rather than a length — a scheduled giveaway, a scheduled embed, a reminder — Arclo accepts several forms:

• YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm
• today 18:00 or tomorrow 09:30
• A Discord timestamp such as <t:1735689600:f> — which is useful because Discord generates it in your time zone
• A unix timestamp, in seconds or milliseconds

Whose time zone

Server default

General → Settings → Defaults has a default time zone. It starts empty, and empty means follow whoever is looking — every date the dashboard shows you is rendered in your own browser's zone. Set it only when you want everybody editing this server to see one particular zone.

Per-configuration zones

Anything scheduled carries its own zone — an automation's schedule, a scheduled report, a giveaway. Those always win over the server default.

Member zones

Reminders and birthdays run on the member's own zone, captured automatically the first time it matters. Nobody is asked to configure one, and a birthday lands on their date rather than on the server's.