obsidian-mcp

MCP server that wraps the Obsidian CLI. Gives AI assistants (Claude Code, etc.) structured access to your vault without opening full shell access.

Requires Obsidian 1.8+ with the CLI enabled and running.

What's exposed

36 tools covering the safe, useful parts of the CLI:

• Read — read notes, outlines, file info, search
• Write — create, append, prepend, properties, templates
• Daily notes — read, append, prepend, path
• Organization — files, folders, move, rename, delete (trash by default)
• Graph — tags, backlinks, orphans, unresolved links
• Tasks — list, toggle
• Vault — bookmarks, templates, commands, plugins, sync status

What's deliberately excluded

• eval — arbitrary JS execution
• dev:* — Chrome DevTools Protocol, DOM, console, screenshots
• plugin:install/uninstall — use run_command if needed

Requirements

• Python 3.11+
• Obsidian running with CLI enabled
• Works from Windows, macOS, and Linux/WSL2

Install

git clone <this-repo> obsidian-mcp
cd obsidian-mcp
python3 -m venv .venv
.venv/bin/pip install "mcp[cli]>=1.0.0"

On Windows, replace .venv/bin/pip with .venv\Scripts\pip.

Configure for Claude Code

Add to ~/.claude.json under mcpServers:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "obsidian": {
      "command": "/path/to/obsidian-mcp/.venv/bin/python",
      "args": ["/path/to/obsidian-mcp/server.py"],
      "env": {
        "OBSIDIAN_VAULT": "My Vault"
      }
    }
  }
}

Restart Claude Code to pick up the change.

Environment variables

Variable	Required	Description
OBSIDIAN_VAULT	No	Vault name for multi-vault setups. If omitted, uses the active vault.
OBSIDIAN_CLI	No	Path to the CLI binary. Auto-detected if omitted.

Auto-detection paths

• Windows — C:\Program Files\Obsidian\Obsidian.com
• macOS — /Applications/Obsidian.app/Contents/MacOS/obsidian-cli
• WSL2 — /mnt/c/Program Files/Obsidian/Obsidian.com
• Linux — obsidian on PATH (snap, AppImage, etc.)

Set OBSIDIAN_CLI if your install is in a non-standard location.