obsidian

name	obsidian
description	Obsidian vault operations via CLI. Use for note management, search, daily notes, knowledge graph analysis, tasks, properties. Not for Notion sync (use notion-sync).
compatibility	Requires Obsidian 1.12+ with CLI support and app running. macOS: /Applications/Obsidian.app/Contents/MacOS/obsidian

ABOUTME: Obsidian vault management via official CLI (1.12+)

ABOUTME: CRUD, search, daily notes, tags, properties, graph analysis, tasks, templates

Obsidian Vault Operations

CLI reference: See ../_OBSIDIAN.md for full command reference. Integration: See ../_SECOND_BRAIN.md for category routing when adding knowledge.

Capabilities

1. Note CRUD: create, read, append, prepend, move, delete
2. Search: full-text with folder filtering, JSON output
3. Daily Notes: read, append, prepend to today's note
4. Tags & Properties: list, set, read, remove frontmatter properties and tags
5. Knowledge Graph: backlinks, outgoing links, orphans, dead-ends, unresolved links
6. Tasks: list, toggle, mark done/todo across vault or daily note
7. Templates: list, read (with variable resolution), create from template
8. History: diff versions, restore from file recovery or sync

Common Workflows

Quick capture to daily note

obsidian daily:append content="- [ ] <task or note>" silent

Find related notes

obsidian backlinks file=<name> counts
obsidian links file=<name>

Vault health check

obsidian orphans total
obsidian deadends total
obsidian unresolved verbose

Search and read

obsidian search query="<term>" matches limit=10
obsidian read file=<result>

Add knowledge to Second Brain

# 1. Read existing content to check for duplicates
obsidian read file="Second Brain - <Topic>"
# 2. Append extracted content (follow _SECOND_BRAIN.md template)
obsidian append file="Second Brain - <Topic>" content="<extracted>"
# 3. Update timeline
obsidian append file="Second Brain - Timeline" content="- **YYYY-MM-DD** | [Topic] | Source: ..."

Onboard project to vault

# Run the project onboarding protocol from _VAULT_CONTEXT.md
# Detects project info from CLAUDE.md, creates Overview/Log/Solutions, registers in MOC
# See _VAULT_CONTEXT.md "Project Onboarding" for full steps

Fallback: Direct File Access

When the Obsidian CLI is unavailable (app not running, CLI errors, tool not found), access vault markdown files directly.

Vault path: '/Users/maroffo/Library/Mobile Documents/iCloud~md~obsidian/Documents'

• Use Read/Write/Edit/Glob/Grep tools on .md files in the vault path
• Note names map to <vault>/<note name>.md (subfolders for organized notes)
• Frontmatter is standard YAML between --- delimiters
• Daily notes: <vault>/Daily Notes/YYYY-MM-DD.md
• Search: use Grep on vault path instead of obsidian search
• Append: use Edit tool to add content at end of file

Rules

• Always use silent flag for create/append when user doesn't need the note opened
• Prefer file=<name> (wikilink resolution) over path= for convenience
• For Second Brain operations, follow ../_SECOND_BRAIN.md routing
• Multiline content: use \n for newlines in content strings
• CLI first, direct file access as fallback. Try CLI; on failure, switch to direct access silently.