FAQ

FAQ

Do I need the companion plugin? Only for the command palette and bridge tools (Dataview, Tasks, Templater, OCR, QuickAdd, Excalidraw, Periodic Notes, Workspaces, Bookmarks, make.md). Direct file ops, frontmatter, tags, links, and search over the cache work through the Local REST API plugin alone. A tool missing a dependency returns plugin_missing naming the plugin. See Plugin Bridges.

Is my vault data sent anywhere? No, unless you configure a cloud embedding provider (OpenAI / Voyage / Cohere) — only then do chunks leave your machine, and only to that provider. With the default Ollama provider everything stays local. The server makes no other external calls; all tools are openWorldHint: false.

Local or cloud embeddings? Either, per vault. Default is local Ollama (nomic-embed-text, 768-dim). You can also use OpenAI, Voyage, or Cohere. A local-Ollama vault and a cloud-Voyage vault coexist in one server. See Configuration.

Can I serve multiple vaults? Yes — multi-vault is native. Each vault is isolated: its own SQLite cache, traces, embedding provider, and ACL slice. Adding/removing a vault needs a server restart; editing an existing vault's config can be applied live with reload_vault. See Architecture.

Does it support Bases (.base)? Yes — native: read_base, create_base, update_base, query_base. Canvas and Excalidraw are supported too.

Does it do GraphRAG / reranking / hybrid retrieval? Not in the shipped v1.x line, which is an access + search MCP (six search tools plus an embed/index substrate). Retrieval intelligence is the converged-engine direction tracked downstream. For now, pair obsidian-tc with an external retrieval/RAG service. See Architecture.

How do I expose it to a remote agent safely? Run the server next to the vault and tunnel the MCP endpoint (Cloudflare Tunnel / SSH forward) — Topology A in Deployment Modes. The server hard-refuses to bind a non-loopback host without JWT auth, so remote exposure forces real auth. See Security and ACL.

Do I need Rust to install it? No. Prebuilt native modules ship for four platforms (linux-x64, darwin-x64, darwin-arm64, win32-x64). Anything else (e.g. linux-arm64) uses a numerically identical pure-JS fallback. Rust is only needed to build the native module yourself.

Which platforms are supported? macOS (x64 + arm64), Linux x64, and Windows x64 get native prebuilds; other targets run on the pure-JS fallback. Docker and a standalone binary are also available.

Which MCP clients work? Any MCP 2025-11-25 client. STDIO for Claude Desktop / Claude Code; Streamable HTTP for HTTP local/remote. HITL uses a custom elicit_token pattern, so confirmations work even on clients without native elicitation support.

How do I confirm a destructive op? The tool returns elicit_required with an elicit_token; re-invoke the same tool with that token within 5 minutes. Tokens are single-use and bound to the exact tool + args. See Security and ACL.

How do I make the whole server read-only? Set acl.readOnly: true — the kill switch short-circuits every write/delete.

Is it affiliated with Obsidian? No. Independent, Apache-2.0. "Obsidian" is a trademark of Dynalist Inc.

Where are the deep docs? ARCHITECTURE.md, docs/G2.1-tools.md, and the docs/ Astro Starlight site.