How can I escape a $ dollar sign in a docker compose file?

You can use a $$ (double-dollar sign) when your configuration needs a literal dollar sign.

You are hitting the docker-compose variable substitution, which is well documented here:

Both $VARIABLE and ${VARIABLE} syntax are supported. Extended shell-style features, such as ${VARIABLE-default} and ${VARIABLE/foo/bar}, are not supported.

You can use a $$ (double-dollar sign) when your configuration needs a literal dollar sign. This also prevents Compose from interpolating a value, so a $$ allows you to refer to environment variables that you don’t want processed by Compose.

docker-compose is written in Python, as you see on github, the doubling mechanism to get the original meaning of special characters can be found in many programs, I needed to use this myself, while programming, as far back in 1984.

Found the answer by copying the suggestion for % characters in this post

It requires a double dollar sign $$.

So I needed "$${Time.now}", which evaluates to "${Time.now}"