Improve Fin’s ability to understand and calculate dates | Community
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Improve Fin’s ability to understand and calculate dates

  • February 4, 2026
  • 3 replies
  • 108 views
Gustav Riederer
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Fin is technically able to read dates, but in practice it often fails to reason about them correctly.

Example

Fin currently sends out discount codes that are already expired, because it doesn’t reliably calculate whether a date is in the past, present, or future.

Feature request
    •    Fin should be able to compare dates to the current date
    •    Fin should not mention or suggest expired offers
    •    Ideally, Fin should be aware of:
    •    “valid until”
    •    “expired”
    •    “not yet active”

Why this matters
    •    Prevents customer frustration
    •    Avoids incorrect promises (e.g. expired discounts)
    •    Increases trust in AI-generated responses
 

Best answer by Gerald Prado

I ran into this as well. We sync one of our event pages that has details and Fin would call out days in the past. What worked for me was to create a snippet of information that I also sync with Fin giving it instruction to first check the current date, and NOT call out events with dates in the past.

I tried adding the instruction into guidance and it didn’t quite work as well as the snippet. There are still instances where Fin will call out the events if the customer asks, but it will, only now it says “these were past events”.

You may want to create a snippet of coupon codes with the instruction to never use these coupon codes. It’s also worth noting the reason that I could NOT get fin to stop calling them out, is that we were syncing from a dedicated web page where the dates were available, and Fin will rank that information of higher importance over snippets and guidance when responding to the user. 

Hope this helps. 

    3 replies

    G
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    • Gerald Prado
    • Connector
    • Answer
    • February 4, 2026

    I ran into this as well. We sync one of our event pages that has details and Fin would call out days in the past. What worked for me was to create a snippet of information that I also sync with Fin giving it instruction to first check the current date, and NOT call out events with dates in the past.

    I tried adding the instruction into guidance and it didn’t quite work as well as the snippet. There are still instances where Fin will call out the events if the customer asks, but it will, only now it says “these were past events”.

    You may want to create a snippet of coupon codes with the instruction to never use these coupon codes. It’s also worth noting the reason that I could NOT get fin to stop calling them out, is that we were syncing from a dedicated web page where the dates were available, and Fin will rank that information of higher importance over snippets and guidance when responding to the user. 

    Hope this helps. 

    Conor
    Super User ✨
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    • Conor
    • Super User ✨
    • February 6, 2026

    I ran into this twice yesterday with a client’s account - I am wondering if there’s a bug or a regression here? I don’t really remember this being so much of a problem until relatively recently. Did you chat to Intercom’s support team about this?

    If it’s not, then one wild idea would be to use a data connector to look up the current date and time, and then use that to compare with the date or time of the event/ whatever. 

    To be clear, I haven’t tested it out, but it seems like a fun mini project to play with! 

    Behind the scenes with Intercom setups from real customers: https://www.youtube.com/@support-stack | The 5 Mistakes You’re Making with Fin’s Data Connectors: https://www.customersuccess.cx/5mistakes
      T
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      I agree - I handle a lot of terms for voucher codes in our knowledge sources we have tried; 

      • Guidance to always check if the terms of a voucher code are expired before attempting to troubleshoot with a customer. 
      • Creating all start / end dates in terms in the ISO 8601 format
      • Deactivating terms at the end dates and applying codes to a ‘Master Expired’ table. 

      None of these actions have worked and Fin still cant define if a date in knowledge sources is in the past. 

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