obsidian

name	obsidian
description	Create, search, read, and link notes in an Obsidian vault using direct markdown file access and the obsidian-cli. Use when user says "add to Obsidian", "find note in vault", "create Obsidian note", or "link notes".
allowed-tools	["Bash","Read","Write"]
model	haiku
user-invocable	true
when_to_use	When user wants to interact with an Obsidian vault — creating notes, searching, reading, adding tags, linking notes, or managing daily notes. Triggers: "add to Obsidian", "create note in vault", "find note about...", "search Obsidian", "link this to...", "open daily note", "add tag".
argument-hint	<action: create|read|search|link|daily|list|append> <vault> <details>

Obsidian

Manage Obsidian vaults via direct markdown file access and the obsidian-cli tool. Obsidian vaults are plain markdown files — most operations work without any special CLI.

Prerequisites

Option 1: Direct file access (no install needed) Obsidian vaults are directories of .md files. Read/write them directly with Bash.

Option 2: obsidian-cli for richer operations:

npm install -g obsidian-cli

Or using the community obsidian-export tool:

cargo install obsidian-export

Configure vault path:

export OBSIDIAN_VAULT="$HOME/Documents/ObsidianVault"

Add to ~/.zshrc or ~/.bashrc for persistence.

Commands

Direct File Operations (no CLI needed)

Operation	Command
List all notes	find "$OBSIDIAN_VAULT" -name "*.md" -type f
Search note content	grep -r "<query>" "$OBSIDIAN_VAULT" --include="*.md" -l
Read a note	cat "$OBSIDIAN_VAULT/<Note Name>.md"
Create a note	Write to "$OBSIDIAN_VAULT/<Note Name>.md"
Append to note	echo "\n<content>" >> "$OBSIDIAN_VAULT/<Note Name>.md"
List by folder	ls "$OBSIDIAN_VAULT/<Folder>/"

Wikilinks (Obsidian's link format)

[[Note Name]]                  ← Link to another note
[[Note Name|Display Text]]     ← Link with custom text
[[Note Name#Heading]]          ← Link to a heading

Frontmatter (YAML metadata)

---
tags: [project, meeting]
date: 2026-03-21
aliases: [alternative name]
---

Daily Notes

# Create or open today's daily note
TODAY=$(date +%Y-%m-%d)
NOTE_PATH="$OBSIDIAN_VAULT/Daily Notes/$TODAY.md"

Usage Examples

Create a new note with frontmatter:

cat > "$OBSIDIAN_VAULT/Projects/New Idea.md" << 'EOF'
---
tags: [idea, project]
date: 2026-03-21
---

# New Idea

## Summary
Brief description here.

## Links
- [[Related Note]]
EOF

Search vault for a topic:

grep -r "machine learning" "$OBSIDIAN_VAULT" --include="*.md" -l

Append to an existing note:

echo "\n\n## Update 2026-03-21\nNew information here." >> "$OBSIDIAN_VAULT/Projects/New Idea.md"

Find all notes tagged with "meeting":

grep -r "tags:.*meeting" "$OBSIDIAN_VAULT" --include="*.md" -l

List all notes in a folder:

ls "$OBSIDIAN_VAULT/Projects/"

Rules

• Always check that OBSIDIAN_VAULT is set: [ -z "$OBSIDIAN_VAULT" ] && echo "Not configured"
• If not set, ask the user for their vault path and suggest adding it to ~/.zshrc
• Prefer direct file access over CLI tools for simple read/write operations
• When creating notes, always use proper Markdown formatting with YAML frontmatter for tags/metadata
• When reading long notes (> 100 lines), display only the first 50 lines and save full content to workspace/
• Use Obsidian wikilink syntax [[Note Name]] for internal links, not regular markdown links
• Preserve existing frontmatter when appending to notes — read the file first
• File names should match Obsidian conventions: avoid special characters except - and _
• Keep responses concise: confirm file path and action in 1-2 lines