| name | obsidian-search-vault |
| description | Search the Obsidian Zettelkasten vault using qmd hybrid search (BM25 + vector + LLM re-ranking). Use when the user wants to find notes, quotes, people, books, literature notes, permanent notes, or any content in their personal knowledge base. |
| allowed-tools | Bash(qmd*) |
Search Vault
Search the user's Obsidian Zettelkasten using qmd. The user's query is passed as arguments to /obsidian-search-vault.
Argument parsing
The argument string may contain:
- A query (required): any free-form text
-c <collection>: restrict search to a specific collection--full: fetch and display the full content of the top result-n <num>: number of results (default: 5)--bm25: use fast keyword-only search instead of hybrid--vector: use pure vector search instead of hybrid
If no arguments are provided, ask the user what they want to search for.
Collections
| Name | Contents |
|---|
quotes | Short quotes and aphorisms from philosophers, scientists, politicians |
people | Biographical notes on real and fictional persons |
books | Book notes with ratings and summaries |
literature-notes | Notes from articles, videos, and podcasts |
moc | Maps of Content — thematic navigation hubs |
permanent-notes | Evergreen atomic Zettelkasten notes |
unsorted-notes | Large mixed collection (5000+ notes) |
series | TV series notes |
movies | Movie notes |
lyrics | Lyrics and poems |
clippings | Web clippings and saved articles |
podcasts | Podcast notes |
companies | Company and business notes |
prompts | AI prompt notes |
countries | Country notes |
cities | City notes |
places | Place notes (restaurants, cafes, locations) |
trips | Trip and travel notes |
Steps
- Parse the query and flags from the user's arguments
- Choose the right command (default:
qmd query for hybrid search)
- Run the search and display results clearly
- If
--full is specified, or the user asks to open/read a note, fetch it with qmd get <docid>
- If results are poor, suggest alternative collections or rephrase
Commands
qmd query "<query>"
qmd query "<query>" -c <collection>
qmd query "<query>" -n 10
qmd search "<query>"
qmd search "<query>" -c <collection>
qmd vsearch "<query>"
qmd get qmd://collection/filename.md
qmd ls <collection>
Output format
Present results as a clear numbered list:
- Title with score badge
- Collection name
- Relevant excerpt from the note
qmd get path for reference
After showing results, offer to:
- Fetch the full content of any result
- Search a specific collection
- Try a different query
