karate.time timezone dependency causes cross-environment test failures

karate.time returns JVM default timezone without conversion option

When using Karate DSL for API testing, the karate.time function returns the current timestamp using the JVM's default timezone. This behavior creates inconsistencies when tests run across different environments, such as developer workstations, CI runners, or containerized deployments, each potentially configured with different timezone settings.

The core issue is that Karate provides no native feature to specify or convert timestamps to a desired timezone. Users must resort to Java interop like ZonedDateTime.now(ZoneId.of('America/New_York')), but such workarounds may fail in restricted execution modes or ahead-of-time compiled native images where Java interop is limited or unavailable.

This limitation becomes critical when APIs expect timestamps in specific timezones or when test assertions compare generated timestamps against expected values in a fixed timezone. The absence of a timezone parameter in karate.time or a dedicated formatting directive forces teams to either synchronize all test environments to the same timezone or implement fragile, environment-specific workarounds.

Which approaches have proven reliable for maintaining timezone-consistent timestamps in Karate tests across heterogeneous deployment environments, and is there a planned native feature to address this limitation?