Date

The Date node provides a calendar date picker that captures a user-selected date when the workflow is launched.

What does the Date node do?

The Date node is an input node that asks the user to pick a date when the workflow runs. The selected date becomes a string available to every downstream node, making it the standard way to parameterize a workflow with a date (report period, publication date, filter cutoff, etc.).

Common use cases:

• Picking the day a generated report should cover.
• Choosing a publication or scheduling date for content produced by the workflow.
• Setting a cutoff date used to filter rows from a Google Sheet or a database query.

Quick setup

Follow these steps to add and configure the Date node in your workflow:

Configuration parameters

The Date node only has a handful of fields — its purpose is to capture a single date, so configuration stays minimal.

Required fields

Optional fields

What does the node output?

The node outputs a single string named Date containing the date selected by the user.

How to use the output

In Draft & Goal you don’t need to look up a system-generated identifier. To use the value:

1. Draw a connection from the Date node’s output port.
2. Connect it to the input of the next node.
3. In that next node, reference the value as {{<NodeName>.output}} (for example {{Report_Date.output}}) inside a prompt, a query, or any text field.

Usage examples

Example 1: Daily report for a chosen date

Let the user pick the day to report on, then build the report from a Google Sheet.

Configuration:

• Name = Report_Date
• Required = true
• Default Value = (empty)

Downstream usage (in an LLM prompt):

Summarize the rows in the sheet whose `date` column equals {{Report_Date.output}}.
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Example 2: Scheduled publication date

Capture a future publication date that flows into a content generator and a scheduler.

Configuration:

• Name = Publish_Date
• Required = true
• Default Value = (today, set so the run form is never empty)

Downstream usage (in a Google Sheets writer):

Article: {{LLM_Article.output}}
Publish on: {{Publish_Date.output}}

Common issues

The output is empty when I reference the node

Cause: Either the Required field is false and the user submitted the run form without picking a date, or the reference name does not match the node name exactly.

Solution: Set Required to true for mandatory dates, and double-check that {{<NodeName>.output}} uses the exact node name as it appears on the canvas (case sensitive, underscores included).

The downstream node fails to parse the date

Cause: The Date node returns a plain string, not a typed date object. A node expecting a specific date format (e.g. MM/DD/YYYY) may reject the default ISO-style value.

Solution: Insert a Find and Replace or an LLM step between the Date node and the consumer to reformat the string, or configure the consumer to accept the ISO format directly.

Best practices and pitfalls

How does it fit into a workflow?

The Date node is almost always the very first node of the workflow: it captures a parameter from the user, then feeds that parameter into a data-fetching or content-generating chain.

graph LR
    Date[Date: Report_Date] --> Sheet[Google Sheets Reader]
    Sheet --> LLM[LLM summarizes rows]
    LLM --> Output[Email or Doc Writer]

Related nodes