search-discovery

created	"2026-03-04T00:00:00.000Z"
modified	"2026-06-28T00:00:00.000Z"
reviewed	"2026-06-28T00:00:00.000Z"
name	search-discovery
description	Obsidian vault search: full-text/grep, tag listing, link traversal, outline, orphan/dead-end detection, broken wikilink audit. Use when exploring backlinks.
user-invocable	false
allowed-tools	Bash(obsidian *), Read, Grep, Glob

Obsidian Search & Discovery

When to Use This Skill

Use this skill when...	Use the alternative instead when...
Running full-text or grep-style search, tag queries, or backlink traversal against the running vault	Triaging orphaned notes for archival or MOC linking — use vault-orphans
Listing unresolved wikilinks Obsidian currently flags as broken	Repairing the broken wikilinks once located — use vault-wikilinks
Inspecting the heading outline of a single note	Reading the full note content — use vault-files
Querying notes already organised by a Base view	— use bases

Search, navigate, and audit the vault link graph using the official Obsidian CLI.

Prerequisites

• Obsidian desktop v1.12.4+ with CLI enabled
• Obsidian must be running

Offline Limitation (App Closed)

Every command here talks to the running Obsidian instance over the CLI; with the app closed they error:

The CLI is unable to find Obsidian. Please make sure Obsidian is running and try again.

For headless / batch link, orphan, dead-end, tag, and broken-wikilink audits with the app closed, use the offline file-parsing path documented in the vault-* audit skills — vault-wikilinks, vault-orphans, vault-mocs, vault-tags, and vault-stubs parse the .md corpus directly with Grep/Glob (frontmatter + [[wikilink]] resolution). The obsidian CLI here is the live-index path; direct parsing is the deterministic headless default for bulk audits.

Search

Path-Only Search

search returns matching file paths only.

# Basic search
obsidian search query="project roadmap"

# Limit and JSON output
obsidian search query="meeting" limit=10 format=json

# Restrict to a folder
obsidian search query="status::active" path=Projects

# Match count only
obsidian search query="TODO" total

# Case-sensitive
obsidian search query="API" case

Grep-Style Context Search

search:context returns path:line: text lines — the agentic-friendly mode.

# Show matching lines with file/line context
obsidian search:context query="TODO"

# JSON-structured context
obsidian search:context query="TODO" format=json

# Restricted to a folder, case-sensitive
obsidian search:context query="API" path=Projects case

# Limit files searched
obsidian search:context query="TODO" limit=20

search:context is the right default for agents — line numbers feed straight into obsidian read + line offsets, or into edit workflows.

Open Search View

# Pop the search panel pre-filled
obsidian search:open query="review needed"

Obsidian Query Operators

The query= value uses Obsidian's standard search syntax — tag:, path:, file:, line:, [property:value], and so on:

obsidian search query="tag:#publish"
obsidian search query="[status:active] tag:#blog"
obsidian search:context query="path:Daily TODO"

Tags

# All tags
obsidian tags

# Tags with counts (default sort=name)
obsidian tags counts

# Sorted by frequency
obsidian tags sort=count counts

# JSON output
obsidian tags format=json

# Tags for the active file (or for file=/path=)
obsidian tags active
obsidian tags file=Recipe

# Tag info (occurrence count + which files)
obsidian tag name=pkm
obsidian tag name=project/active total
obsidian tag name=pkm verbose

Outline (Headings)

# Heading tree of the active file
obsidian outline

# Specific file
obsidian outline file=Recipe

# JSON for navigation
obsidian outline file=Recipe format=json

# Markdown render
obsidian outline file=Recipe format=md

# Just the heading count
obsidian outline file=Recipe total

Links

# Outgoing links from a note (default: active file)
obsidian links file="Architecture Overview"
obsidian links file="Architecture Overview" total

# Backlinks
obsidian backlinks file="API Design"
obsidian backlinks file="API Design" counts
obsidian backlinks file="API Design" format=json

# Unresolved (broken) wikilinks across the vault
obsidian unresolved
obsidian unresolved counts          # with link counts
obsidian unresolved verbose         # include source files
obsidian unresolved format=json

# Notes with no incoming links
obsidian orphans

# Notes with no outgoing links
obsidian deadends

# Counts only
obsidian orphans total
obsidian deadends total

orphans (no incoming) and deadends (no outgoing) target different problems — combine them to find truly disconnected notes.

Common Flags

Flag	Description
format=json	JSON output for machine parsing
format=tsv, format=csv	Spreadsheet-friendly output
format=md	Markdown rendering (outline, base:query)
limit=N	Cap result count
path=<folder>	Restrict search to a folder
case	Case-sensitive search
total	Return only the count
counts	Include per-result counts
verbose	Include source files / details
--copy	Copy result to clipboard

Agentic Optimizations

Context	Command
Grep-style search (default)	obsidian search:context query="term"
Path-only search (structured)	obsidian search query="term" format=json
Match count	obsidian search query="term" total
Tag frequency analysis	obsidian tags counts sort=count
Find tagged notes	obsidian tag name=X verbose
Heading outline (json)	obsidian outline file=X format=json
Broken link audit	obsidian unresolved counts verbose
Orphan detection	obsidian orphans
Dead-end detection	obsidian deadends
Link graph for note	obsidian links file=X + obsidian backlinks file=X

Related Skills

• vault-files — Read content at a path:line returned by search:context
• properties — Search and filter by frontmatter properties
• bases — Pre-built queries via Base views
• bookmarks — Promote a frequent search to a saved bookmark