| name | obsidian |
| description | Use when working with Obsidian vaults, creating/searching/moving notes, or automating note management with the official obsidian CLI, especially with multiline or shell-unsafe content |
Obsidian
Obsidian vault = a normal folder on disk.
Use the Official CLI
- Command name is
obsidian (not obsidian-cli).
- Requires Obsidian desktop
1.12+ with Settings -> General -> Command line interface enabled.
- CLI registration adds
obsidian to PATH; restart the shell after enabling.
- CLI talks to the running Obsidian app; first command should launch the app if needed.
Vault Targeting
- If terminal
cwd is inside a vault, that vault is used.
- Otherwise, the currently active vault is used.
- For deterministic scripts, pass
vault="<vault name>" as the first argument.
- List known vaults:
obsidian vaults verbose
- Show current vault path:
obsidian vault info=path
File Targeting
file=<name> resolves with wikilink-style matching by file name.path=<path> targets an exact path from the vault root (recommended for automation).
Official CLI Quick Reference
| Action | Command |
|---|
| Show help | obsidian help |
| Help for one command | obsidian help create |
| Open/create daily note | obsidian daily |
| Get daily note path | obsidian daily:path |
| Open note | obsidian open path="Folder/Note.md" |
| Read note | obsidian read path="Folder/Note.md" |
| Create note | obsidian create path="Folder/New note.md" content="..." |
| Append to note | obsidian append path="Folder/New note.md" content="..." |
| Prepend note | obsidian prepend path="Folder/New note.md" content="..." |
| Move/rename note | obsidian move path="old/path.md" to="new/path.md" |
| Delete note | obsidian delete path="Folder/Note.md" |
| Search paths | obsidian search query="query" |
| Search with matching lines | obsidian search:context query="query" |
| Copy output to clipboard | obsidian read path="Folder/Note.md" --copy |
Key Points
vault="<name>" must be the first argument when used.create, append, and prepend use content=<text>, with open/overwrite as flags.move updates links if Automatically update internal links is enabled in vault settings.- Current CLI behavior is mostly silent/non-interactive; use
open when you want the file focused in the app.
- For automation, prefer explicit
vault=... and exact path=... values.
Safe Content Passing
When content includes backticks, $(), or a lot of quotes, pass it via a temp file and command substitution.
Temp file + heredoc (preferred):
tmp="$(mktemp)"
cat <<'EOF' > "$tmp"
... note content ...
EOF
obsidian vault="My Vault" create path="Folder/New note.md" content="$(cat "$tmp")"
rm "$tmp"
Inline heredoc (no temp file):
obsidian create path="Folder/New note.md" content="$(cat <<'EOF'
... note content ...
EOF
)"
Direct write to vault path (fallback):
vault_path="$(obsidian vault info=path)"
note="$vault_path/Folder/New note.md"
mkdir -p "${note%/*}"
cat <<'EOF' > "$note"
... note content ...
EOF
Verify with: obsidian read path="Folder/New note.md"
