Mothership dashboard: drop American date format, use international short weekday + month-day-year + 24h time

[DKuleshov]

Problem

Mothership dashboard renders timestamps via plain Date.prototype.toLocaleString(), which honours the browser's locale - on en-US browsers that produces American MM/DD/YYYY with 12h AM/PM (5/19/2026, 1:26 PM). Mixed locales between users + the rest of the dotbot client UI which uses an explicit international format makes timestamps inconsistent and ambiguous.

Target format

Tue, May 19 2026 13:26

• Short weekday (Tue)
• Short month name (May) - month-day-year ordering matches the existing client decisions.js convention (month-short, day, year)
• 24h time, leading zeros on hour + minute
• No seconds, no AM/PM, no comma between date and time

Existing client convention to match

core/ui/static/modules/decisions.js _friendlyDate:

new Date(iso).toLocaleDateString(undefined, { month: 'short', day: 'numeric', year: 'numeric' });

That gives May 19, 2026 (no weekday, no time). Mothership dashboard needs the longer form with weekday + time. Same option-bag style, just more fields.

Where to fix

• server/src/Dotbot.Server/wwwroot/js/dashboard.js line 289 - inst.createdAt rendered via new Date(inst.createdAt).toLocaleString(). Replace with an Intl.DateTimeFormat-based helper.
• server/src/Dotbot.Server/wwwroot/js/dashboard.js line 817 - Last refresh: ${new Date().toLocaleTimeString()} renders 12h time on en-US browsers. Switch to 24h via the same helper or a hour12: false formatter.
• Any other toLocaleString() / toLocaleDateString() / toLocaleTimeString() calls in server/src/Dotbot.Server/wwwroot/ that surface timestamps. Sweep with grep -rn toLocale wwwroot/.
• If the dashboard has any server-rendered timestamps in Razor / .cshtml, format them server-side with IFormatProvider matching the JS shape so refresh-vs-initial-render look identical.

Suggested helper

One place to own the format. Drop in wwwroot/js/utils.js (or wherever shared dashboard helpers live):

const _dashboardDateFmt = new Intl.DateTimeFormat('en-GB', {
    weekday: 'short',
    month: 'short',
    day: 'numeric',
    year: 'numeric',
    hour: '2-digit',
    minute: '2-digit',
    hour12: false,
});

// "Tue, May 19, 2026, 13:26" - en-GB gives day-month-year by default;
// post-process to month-day order without commas to match the target.
function formatDashboardDateTime(iso) {
    if (!iso) return '-';
    const d = new Date(iso);
    if (isNaN(d)) return '-';
    const parts = _dashboardDateFmt.formatToParts(d);
    const get = type => parts.find(p => p.type === type)?.value ?? '';
    return `${get('weekday')}, ${get('month')} ${get('day')} ${get('year')} ${get('hour')}:${get('minute')}`;
}

formatToParts decouples output from locale-specific punctuation / ordering. Caller just passes an ISO string.

Acceptance

• All visible timestamps in the Mothership dashboard render as Tue, May 19 2026 13:26 regardless of browser locale.
• No remaining toLocaleString() / toLocaleDateString() / toLocaleTimeString() calls on Date objects under server/src/Dotbot.Server/wwwroot/ for user-visible timestamps. (Calls on numbers, e.g. tokens.toLocaleString() for thousands-separators, are fine.)
• Auto-refresh footer shows 24h time.
• Helper has a unit-style sanity test in whatever JS-test setup the dashboard uses (or a Razor smoke if no JS tests).

Out of scope

• Timezone selection / per-user TZ preference - format stays browser-local. Future enhancement if needed.
• Client outpost UI - already uses the short-month convention; only touch if the same surface drifts.
• Internationalisation beyond English month/weekday names - dotbot's UI is currently English only.

Files likely touched

• server/src/Dotbot.Server/wwwroot/js/dashboard.js
• server/src/Dotbot.Server/wwwroot/js/utils.js (new helper) or wherever shared helpers live
• server/src/Dotbot.Server/wwwroot/css/*.css only if column widths need adjusting for the longer string

[IBondarenko-iwg]

@DKuleshov Assign this to me, please