obsidian-cli

name	obsidian-cli
description	Provides obsidian-cli for Obsidian vault operations. Use when creating, moving, renaming, or deleting vault notes; searching vault content; querying or setting frontmatter properties; working with tags; or looking up obsidian-cli command syntax and usage. Covers composition guidance and operator reference for obsidian-cli subcommands. Triggers: 'obsidian-cli', 'create note', 'move note', 'rename note', 'delete note', 'search vault', 'find notes', 'obsidian', 'vault', 'tag search', 'property query', 'frontmatter', 'check usage', 'command usage'. Do NOT use for non-vault markdown files.
compatibility	Requires obsidian-cli on PATH and a running Obsidian instance.

Obsidian CLI

Use obsidian-cli for all Obsidian vault operations. obsidian-cli uses Obsidian's index, handles backlink updates, and applies Templater folder rules automatically.

Get command usage via obsidian-cli <command> with no arguments.

File Operations

Create

obsidian-cli create path="Notes/Note Title.md" content="..."

Pass path= alone to create. Pass the full body in the same create call via content=. Use \n for newlines and \t for tabs inside the content value. Creating an empty file then filling it is two operations that can desync.

Templater folder rules apply templates automatically by path. Use template= only when overriding the default.

After creating a note, use Edit or the md tool to modify its content.

Append and Prepend

obsidian-cli append path="Notes/Note Title.md" content="..."
obsidian-cli prepend path="Notes/Note Title.md" content="..."

Use append only to add to a file that already has content.

Move

obsidian-cli move file="Note Title" to="Projects/"

file= resolves by name (wikilink-style, no .md extension needed). path= is an exact vault-relative path (folder/note.md).

Rename

obsidian-cli rename file="Note Title" name="New Title.md"

Read

obsidian-cli read path="Notes/Note Title.md"

Delete

obsidian-cli delete path="Notes/Note Title.md"

Searching

obsidian-cli search query="phrase" limit=20
obsidian-cli search:context query="phrase"
obsidian-cli search query="phrase" path="Projects"
obsidian-cli search query="phrase" format=json

format=json returns a flat JSON array of path strings — not objects. Extract paths with jq -r '.[]', not .[].path:

obsidian-cli search query="rabbitmq" format=json | jq -r '.[]'

The query= value accepts Obsidian's full search syntax.

Text and Boolean Operators

Query	Meaning
query="project notes"	AND (both must appear)
query="project OR notes"	OR
query="\"team meeting\""	exact phrase
query="project -draft"	exclude term
query="meeting (work OR personal)"	grouped OR

Multi-word values without inner quotes are AND content matches across body prose, not exact-phrase or filename matches. Wrap with escaped quotes (query="\"exact phrase\"") for the literal phrase, or use the file: operator below to match against filenames.

Search Operators

Operator	Purpose	Example
file:	Match filename	file:.jpg
path:	Match file path	path:"Daily notes/2022"
content:	Match content explicitly	content:"happy cat"
tag:	Match tag (not in code blocks)	tag:#work
line:	Both terms on same line	line:(mix flour)
block:	Both terms in same block	block:(dog cat)
section:	Both terms under same heading	section:(dog cat)
task:	Match in any task	task:call
task-todo:	Match uncompleted task	task-todo:call
task-done:	Match completed task	task-done:call
match-case:	Case-sensitive	match-case:HappyCat
/regex/	JavaScript regex	/\d{4}-\d{2}-\d{2}/

tag: does not traverse tag hierarchies — tag:#parent does not match #parent/child. block: is slower than other operators (parses all Markdown).

Checking Whether a Note Exists

1. By known path — obsidian-cli file path="Notes/Example Topic.md". Returns metadata for the note, or prints Error: File "<p>" not found. to stdout when absent. Exit code is 0 either way — detect absence by checking the output, not $?.

2. By title only — obsidian-cli search query='file:"Example Topic"' format=json | jq -r '.[]'. The file: operator matches against filenames, so the result set is not diluted by body-prose matches. Empty array means no such note.

A bare multi-word search query= is a content search — it will both miss exact-title notes whose body does not repeat the title, and bury the right note among AND-matches across body prose. Reach for file or the file: operator instead when you only want to know whether a note exists.

Property (Frontmatter) Queries

Use bracket syntax inside query=:

Query	Meaning
[status]	Files that have the status property
[status:"In Progress"]	Files where status equals "In Progress"
[status:null]	Files where status exists but has no value
[status:TODO OR "In Progress"]	OR within property value
[author:null]	Property is unset

null matches truly blank properties (status: ) but not "" or [].

Combine with text: query="[type:article] climate"

Tag Commands

obsidian-cli tag name="#project" verbose
obsidian-cli tag name="#project" total
obsidian-cli search query="tag:#project meeting"

Properties

obsidian-cli property:read path="Notes/Note.md" name="status"
obsidian-cli property:set path="Notes/Note.md" name="status" value="Done"
obsidian-cli property:remove path="Notes/Note.md" name="status"
obsidian-cli properties path="Notes/Note.md"

Other Useful Commands

obsidian-cli backlinks path="Notes/Note.md"
obsidian-cli links path="Notes/Note.md"
obsidian-cli orphans
obsidian-cli deadends
obsidian-cli unresolved
obsidian-cli recents
obsidian-cli wordcount path="Notes/Note.md"
obsidian-cli outline path="Notes/Note.md"
obsidian-cli tasks
obsidian-cli files path="Notes"
obsidian-cli folders