obsidian-cli

name	obsidian-cli
description	Use when the user wants direct terminal-driven interaction with a live Obsidian vault through the official Obsidian CLI. Covers concrete vault operations such as note CRUD, daily-note workflows, vault search, tasks, links, plugin management, and sync/history checks performed against a running Obsidian desktop app.

Obsidian CLI

Use the official obsidian CLI to act on a running Obsidian desktop instance instead of manipulating vault files blindly on disk.

Use This Skill When

• The user wants you to read, create, append to, prepend to, rename, move, or delete notes in Obsidian
• The user wants daily-note operations such as reading today's note or appending a log entry
• The user wants vault search, backlinks, orphan/dead-end checks, unresolved links, tags, properties, or task queries
• The user wants plugin, theme, snippet, sync, history, workspace, or command execution through Obsidian itself
• The user wants terminal automation against a live vault rather than a markdown-only filesystem edit

Do Not Use This Skill When

• The user only wants conceptual advice about Obsidian, plugins, themes, or workflows
• The task is just markdown authoring or note-organization work that does not need a running Obsidian instance
• The task is better handled by a note-structure or knowledge-management agent such as obsidian-note-organizer
• The request is purely about filesystem edits in a vault clone and there is no value in going through Obsidian itself

Use this skill when command semantics matter. Skip it when plain file edits are simpler and equally correct.

Preconditions

1. obsidian must be on PATH
2. Obsidian Desktop must be running
3. CLI must be enabled in Obsidian settings
4. If multiple vaults exist, target the intended vault explicitly when there is any ambiguity

Working Rules

1. Prefer the CLI over ad hoc file edits when the request is naturally a vault operation
2. Prefer explicit vault targeting when there is any chance the active vault is not the intended one
3. Use read-only inspection first when changing plugins, sync, or history state
4. If a CLI action fails, identify whether the blocker is missing PATH setup, disabled CLI, no running desktop instance, or wrong vault selection
5. When a request can be satisfied either by CLI or raw file edits, choose the CLI only if it provides safer semantics or user-visible parity with Obsidian behavior
6. Use vault-relative paths for Obsidian commands
7. Quote key=value arguments when values contain spaces
8. Verify results with a follow-up read/list command after writes when practical
9. If the CLI is noisy in this environment, summarize the meaningful result instead of relaying wrapper noise

Command Shape

obsidian <command> [subcommand] [key=value ...] [flags]

To target a specific vault:

obsidian "Vault Name" <command> ...

Common Patterns

Read and write notes

obsidian read path="Projects/Plan.md"
obsidian create path="Projects/New Note" content="# New Note"
obsidian append path="Projects/Plan.md" content="- next item"
obsidian prepend path="Projects/Plan.md" content="## Update"
obsidian move path="Projects/Old.md" to="Archive/Old.md"
obsidian delete path="Projects/Old.md"

Daily notes

obsidian daily:read
obsidian daily:append content="- [ ] Follow up"
obsidian daily:prepend content="## Morning"

Search and metadata

obsidian search query="crosspoint" limit=10
obsidian search query="incident" path="Work" format=json
obsidian properties path="Projects/Plan.md"
obsidian property:set path="Projects/Plan.md" name="status" value="active"
obsidian tags counts sort=count

Tasks and links

obsidian tasks
obsidian tasks daily
obsidian task path="Projects/Plan.md" line=12 toggle
obsidian backlinks path="Projects/Plan.md"
obsidian unresolved
obsidian orphans
obsidian deadends

Plugins and sync

obsidian plugins filter=community
obsidian plugin:install id=obsidian-git enable
obsidian plugin:disable id=obsidian-git filter=community
obsidian plugins:restrict off
obsidian sync:status
obsidian sync:history path="Projects/Plan.md"

Suggested Workflow

1. Confirm the target vault when needed
2. Inspect current state with a read/list/search command
3. Execute the minimal Obsidian CLI command that satisfies the request
4. Verify the result with a second CLI command
5. Report the meaningful outcome, not the raw wrapper noise

Decision Boundary

• Use obsidian-cli for live-vault actions
• Use normal shell/file tools for plain repository edits
• Use obsidian-note-organizer for note design, frontmatter conventions, tagging strategy, wikilink structure, and content organization
• Use both only when the task clearly needs both structure work and live vault operations

Troubleshooting

• If obsidian is missing, check command -v obsidian
• If commands fail silently, ensure the desktop app is running and CLI is enabled
• If the wrong vault is targeted, pass the vault name as the first argument
• If you need exact flags for a command family, read references/command-reference.md