obsidian-vault-search

name

obsidian-vault-search

description

Search an Obsidian vault three ways — Meilisearch for topic and fuzzy queries, ripgrep for exact strings/tags/task glyphs, and a date-aware helper for natural-language dates and overdue math. Use when finding notes about a topic, half-remembered ideas, recent writing, tagged content, or due/overdue/high-priority tasks in a local Markdown vault. Do NOT use to add or edit notes (use obsidian-capture).

obsidian-vault-search

Find Markdown notes and tasks in an Obsidian vault without loading the whole vault into context.

Routing

1. Topic / fuzzy / "notes about X" → scripts/meili_search.py. Typo-tolerant full-text over a Meilisearch index; best when the user won't remember exact words. Expand synonyms yourself across queries.
2. Exact content, frontmatter, tags, task glyphs → direct rg.
3. Natural-language dates, overdue comparisons, CJK term extraction → scripts/vault_search.py.

If Meilisearch is unreachable or unconfigured (script exits non-zero), fall back to tiers 2–3 — they only need the local vault.

Env: OBSIDIAN_VAULT (vault root), MEILI_URL (default http://127.0.0.1:7700), MEILI_SEARCH_KEY (file fallback ~/meilisearch/search-key.txt), MEILI_INDEX (default notes).

Meilisearch

Run with --help for all flags. Never dump raw hits into context — use --fields and small --limit.

uv run scripts/meili_search.py "spaced repetition" --limit 5 --fields "title,path"
uv run scripts/meili_search.py "prompt caching" --filter "tags=ai" --sort "updated:desc" --json

Hit path values are vault-relative (e.g. Library/Book Notes/Influence.md); join with $OBSIDIAN_VAULT to open.

Direct Patterns

rg "keyword" --glob "*.md" "$OBSIDIAN_VAULT"
rg -lU 'tags:\n(\s*- .*\n)*?\s*- tagname\b' --glob "*.md" "$OBSIDIAN_VAULT"  # YAML list tags; prefer meili --filter "tags=tagname" when index is up
rg "created: $(date +%Y-%m)" --glob "*.md" "$OBSIDIAN_VAULT"
rg "^- \[ \].*📅 $(date +%F)" --glob "*.md" "$OBSIDIAN_VAULT"
rg "^- \[ \].*⏫" --glob "*.md" "$OBSIDIAN_VAULT"

Date-Aware Script

uv run scripts/vault_search.py "recent week psychology"
uv run scripts/vault_search.py "overdue tasks"
uv run scripts/vault_search.py "找3-2-1技巧" --raw   # --raw: plain paths for piping

Notes

• created: YYYY-MM-DD frontmatter drives dates; vault_search.py falls back to file mtime.
• Task markers (Tasks plugin): 📅 due, 🛫 start, ⏳ scheduled, ⏫/🔼/🔽 priority.
• Synonym expansion is the agent's job, not the scripts'.