What causes "Invalid notification dispatch time: ${input}" in mastra-ai/mastra?

Pass a valid ISO 8601 string (e.g. new Date().toISOString()) or omit the argument to use the current time

Invalid notification dispatch time: ${input}

Error message

Invalid notification dispatch time: ${input}

What it means

parseNotificationDispatchNow converts an optional string into the dispatch 'now' Date for the notification scheduling workflow. If a string is provided but unparseable by Date, it throws rather than silently using an ambiguous date. Built-in new Date quirks (e.g. partial dates) make explicit validation worthwhile.

Source

Thrown at packages/core/src/notifications/workflow.ts:38

/**
 * The dispatcher ticks once a minute, has a single non-suspending step, and is
 * never resumed — no code path consumes its snapshot. Opting out of snapshot
 * persistence entirely keeps `mastra_workflow_snapshot` from growing by one
 * dead row per minute forever (issue #20254).
 */
const NOTIFICATION_DISPATCH_SHOULD_PERSIST_SNAPSHOT = () => false;

export type NotificationDispatchConfig = {
  /** Defaults to true. Set false to opt out of automatic scheduled dispatch. */
  enabled?: boolean;
  cron?: string;
  batchSize?: number;
};

export function parseNotificationDispatchNow(input?: string): Date {
  const now = input ? new Date(input) : new Date();
  if (Number.isNaN(now.getTime())) {
    throw new Error(`Invalid notification dispatch time: ${input}`);
  }
  return now;
}

/**
 * Builds the imperative schedule row that drives the notification dispatcher.
 * Created lazily by `Mastra.__ensureNotificationDispatchReady()` on the first
 * deferred notification, rather than declared on the workflow, so idle apps
 * never start the scheduler.
 */
export function buildNotificationDispatchSchedule({
  cron = NOTIFICATION_DISPATCH_DEFAULT_CRON,
  batchSize = NOTIFICATION_DISPATCH_DEFAULT_BATCH_SIZE,
}: Omit<NotificationDispatchConfig, 'enabled'> = {}): Schedule {
  const now = Date.now();
  return {
    id: NOTIFICATION_DISPATCH_SCHEDULE_ROW_ID,
    target: {

View on GitHub (pinned to 75dd419e61)

Solutions

Pass a valid ISO 8601 string (e.g. new Date().toISOString()) or omit the argument to use the current time
Validate the date string with new Date(v) and Number.isNaN(check.getTime()) before calling
Sanitize config/env inputs that feed the dispatch time
Parse user-facing dates with a dedicated parser (e.g. temporal or date-fns parse) before conversion

Example fix

// before
parseNotificationDispatchNow('next tuesday');
// after
const iso = new Date(Date.now() + 7 * 864e5).toISOString();
parseNotificationDispatchNow(iso);

Defensive patterns

Strategy: validation

Validate before calling

function toSafeDispatchNow(input?: string): Date {
  if (!input) return new Date();
  const d = new Date(input);
  if (Number.isNaN(d.getTime())) throw new TypeError(`Invalid dispatch time: ${input}`);
  return d;
}

Type guard

function isValidDateString(v: unknown): v is string {
  return typeof v === 'string' && !Number.isNaN(new Date(v).getTime());
}

Try / catch

try {
  const now = parseNotificationDispatchNow(rawTime);
} catch (e) {
  logger.error('Bad dispatch time, falling back to now', { rawTime, e });
  const now = new Date();
}

Prevention

Only pass ISO 8601 strings (Date.prototype.toISOString output)
Validate date config values at startup, not at dispatch time
Use a date library to parse user-supplied schedule text before conversion

When it happens

Trigger: Calling parseNotificationDispatchNow (or the notification workflow with a dispatch-time override) with a malformed string like 'next tuesday', '2026-13-45', or an ISO string with a bad timezone.

Common situations: Passing user-supplied free-text schedule times instead of ISO 8601; locale-dependent date strings; env/config values with typos (e.g. '20260829T010101Z' missing separators in some engines).

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of mastra-ai/mastra@75dd419e61 (2026-08-30). Data as JSON: /api/errors/1655aac0009ad559. Report an issue: GitHub.