Issue Connecting Claude to Obsidian via the MCP Server

[DataVamp01]

Summary of Troubleshooting Steps
Goal: To connect Claude Desktop to Obsidian using the obsidian-mcp server.

Initial Problem: Consistently receiving an "MCP obsidian: Server disconnected" error in the Claude Desktop application.

Troubleshooting Steps Performed:

Command Execution Errors:

Initially failed to run the server manually, receiving a 'C:\Program' is not recognized... error.

Fix: Correctly enclosed the executable path in double quotes.

Subsequently received an 'Unexpected token' error.

Fix: Identified the command was being run in PowerShell instead of Command Prompt. Corrected the syntax for both shells (& for PowerShell) and proceeded with cmd.exe.

Firewall and Network Configuration:

After the command ran, the "Server disconnected" error persisted.

Attempted to create a Windows Defender Firewall exception for node.exe.

Encountered an issue where the "Private" network checkbox was greyed out.

Fix: Changed the active Windows network profile from "Public" to "Private," which allowed the firewall rule to be correctly set for both profiles.

Application and Configuration File Errors:

After fixing the firewall, the Claude application itself began to crash on startup with a "JavaScript error occurred in the main process."

This was followed by a "Could not load app settings" error pointing to a JSON parsing issue: Unexpected non-whitespace character after JSON at position 12.

Fix: Corrected the claude_desktop_config.json file, which had invalid syntax (missing quotes on keys and strings, and likely contained extra text from an erroneous copy-paste).

Attempted to find server options using npx obsidian-mcp --help, which returned a Vault directory does not exist: --help error.

Fix: Deduced that the vault path was a required positional argument, not an optional one.

Final Configuration:

Arrived at the following syntactically correct and logically ordered configuration in claude_desktop_config.json:

JSON

{
"mcpServers": {
"obsidian": {
"command": "C:\Program Files\nodejs\npx.cmd",
"args": [
"-y",
"obsidian-mcp",
"[File location]",
"--api-url",
"https://127.0.0.1:27124"
],
"env": {
"OBSIDIAN_API_KEY": "[API Key]"
}
}
}
}
Current Status:

Despite all the above corrections, the "MCP obsidian: Server disconnected" error still occurs on startup, even though the application no longer crashes and the configuration file is correct. This strongly suggests a software bug within the MCP server package or its interaction with the local environment.

After extensive troubleshooting, we suspect the issue may not be a simple connection or configuration error. I noticed another user reported 'UTF-8 problems,' and it's possible the connection is failing silently due to a special character in a file or folder name within my Obsidian vault.

[MateusFenoci]

Same issue

[Straven]

Did you try to use it with pythons uv instead of npx. I'm using with uv and the connection crashes rarely.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "mcp-obsidian": {
      "command": "uv",
      "args": [
        "--directory",
        "<path-to>mcp-obsidian",
        "run",
        "mcp-obsidian"
      ],
      "env": {
        "OBSIDIAN_API_KEY": "OBSIDIAN_API_KEY",
        "OBSIDIAN_HOST": "127.0.0.1",
        "OBSIDIAN_PORT": "27126"
      }
    }
  },
  "globalShortcut": "Alt+Cmd+C"
}

I use the same config on macOS and windows machines. And the Claude have issues with connecting very rarely. In recent 6 months only once it happened 3 times in a month and usually it's once per month, not a problem I think. The main thing is to run Obsidian earlier then Claude, to be ensured that when Claude launched the mcm-server is already running.

[Hackerobi]

✅ Working Solution for Docker Desktop on Linux (Pop!_OS/Ubuntu)

I've successfully got the Obsidian MCP server working on Pop!_OS with Docker Desktop and wanted to share the complete solution for the community.

1. Configure Obsidian Local REST API to bind to 0.0.0.0

In Obsidian Settings → Local REST API:

• Change Host/IP Address from 127.0.0.1 to 0.0.0.0
• This allows Docker containers on the bridge network to connect

2. Manually configure Claude Desktop (bypass Docker MCP toolkit)

Edit ~/.config/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "obsidian": {
      "command": "docker",
      "args": [
        "run",
        "-i",
        "--rm",
        "--add-host=host.docker.internal:host-gateway",
        "-e",
        "OBSIDIAN_HOST=host.docker.internal",
        "-e",
        "OBSIDIAN_API_KEY=YOUR_API_KEY_HERE",
        "mcp/obsidian"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Key points:

• Use -e flags directly in args array (the env object doesn't work)
• Include --add-host=host.docker.internal:host-gateway (required on Linux)
• Set OBSIDIAN_HOST=host.docker.internal (no protocol, no port)
• Replace YOUR_API_KEY_HERE with your actual API key

3. Restart Claude Desktop completely

Fully quit and relaunch (not just close the window).

Verification

Test Docker connectivity to your host:

# Test that host.docker.internal resolves
docker run --rm --add-host=host.docker.internal:host-gateway alpine ping -c 2 host.docker.internal

# Test that Docker can reach Obsidian API
docker run --rm --add-host=host.docker.internal:host-gateway curlimages/curl:latest \
  curl -k -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY" https://host.docker.internal:27124/vault/

Both should succeed.

Security Note

⚠️ Setting Obsidian's REST API to 0.0.0.0 makes it accessible on your local network. Use a firewall to block external access to port 27124, or only use this on trusted networks.

---

Environment:

• Pop!_OS 22.04 (Ubuntu-based)
• Docker Desktop for Linux
• Claude Desktop
• Obsidian (Flatpak)
• Obsidian Local REST API plugin

Hope this helps others struggling with the same issue! 🎉

[Galat33a]

hi
i have an issue with Obsidian connection on Calude Desktop on Linux Mint...
Its like the connection is not stable, sometimes it sees the vault and sometimes not... most of the time not.
the vault is not so big, under 200MB... the Obsdian connector shows active in CD... and the error i receive is "Failed to attach resource. You can try again"
the MCP is set like this

"obsidian": {
"command": "npx",
"args": [
"-y",
"obsidian-mcp",
"/home/xx/yyyy/zzzzz"
],
"env": {
"OBSIDIAN_API_KEY": "my-key",
"OBSIDIAN_PORT": "27123",
"OBSIDIAN_URL": "http://localhost:27123",
"NODE_TLS_REJECT_UNAUTHORIZED": "0",
"UV_THREADPOOL_SIZE": "64"
}

I would really appreciate any advice!
ah: super new to Linux and no coding education... i done all with AI and what i could find online...

thank you!

[NicolasStephney]

"mcpServers": {
"obsidian": {
"command": "docker",
"args": [
"run",
"-i",
"--rm",
"--add-host=host.docker.internal:host-gateway",
"-e",
"OBSIDIAN_HOST=host.docker.internal",
"-e",
"OBSIDIAN_API_KEY=YOUR_API_KEY_HERE",
"mcp/obsidian"
]
}
}

Thank you so much for this direct connection been trying for hours to connect to Docker MCP, even by manually copying a file from the new location of Claude's config file, doing the connection in Docker MCP, then copying those settings over, but it failed. Tried multiple environmental variables for the connection, but no luck. However, this direct connection works on Windows 11.