Why null due dates beat invented Fridays

The failure mode

A transcript says: “Alex will send the deck by Friday.” Your extraction prompt asks for due_date as YYYY-MM-DD. The model picks a Friday — maybe last week’s, maybe next month’s — and Notion/Linear quietly stores it.

Nobody notices until standup, when the ticket is already late or still a week out. The automation “worked.” The data lied.

Prefer null when the date isn’t absolute

Treat relative phrases as non-dates unless you also pass a meeting_date (or “today”) and deliberately resolve them:

• Absolute: “by September 20”, “due 2026-09-20” → emit ISO date
• Relative without anchor: “by Friday”, “next week”, “EOD” → null
• Vague: “soon”, “when you can” → null

Schema sketch

{
  "title": "Send deck to stakeholders",
  "owner": "Alex",
  "due_date": null,
  "priority": "medium",
  "source_span": "Alex will send the deck by Friday"
}

Downstream, Notion’s date property stays blank; Linear’s dueDate is omitted. Humans still see the quote in the description if you keep source_span.

If you must resolve relative dates

Pass an explicit anchor into the prompt:

{
  "meeting_date": "2026-09-15",
  "timezone": "America/Los_Angeles",
  "transcript": "..."
}

Then teach the model: “Friday” means the next Friday on/after meeting_date in that timezone. Still keep a confidence gate — if unsure, null wins.

Takeaway

Action-item automation should be boring and trustworthy. Invented deadlines destroy trust faster than missing ones. Start with null; add calendar resolution only when you have an anchor date.