obsidian-cli

name

obsidian-cli

description

Interact with the running Obsidian vault via the `obsidian` CLI: read, create, append, search, rename, move notes; manage daily notes; list files and folders; set/read frontmatter properties; list tags. Auto-loads whenever the user wants to save content to Obsidian, take or capture a note, append to today's daily note, search the vault, look up or quote an existing vault note, or open a note in Obsidian — even when the user does not mention the CLI by name. Triggers include "save to Obsidian", "note this", "take a note", "add to today's note", "search my vault", "what did I write about X", "open in Obsidian", "rename this note", "Obsidianに保存", "メモして", "メモを取って", "メモに残して", "デイリーノートに追記", "今日のノートに追加", "vaultを検索", "Obsidianのノートを読んで", "Obsidianで開いて", "ノートをリネーム", or any request that names a vault file, a vault folder (e.g. `00_Inbox/`, `99_Tracking/Daily/`), a daily/weekly note, or a wikilink target.

Obsidian CLI

Use the obsidian CLI to interact with a running Obsidian instance.

Prerequisites

Obsidian must be running. The CLI communicates with the active Obsidian app. If Obsidian is not open, all commands will fail.

Target vault: Main (default — no vault= needed in most cases).

Syntax

Parameters take a value with =. Quote values with spaces:

obsidian create name="My Note" content="Hello world"

Flags are boolean switches with no value:

obsidian create name="My Note" overwrite

File Targeting

• file=<name> — resolves like a wikilink (name only, no path or extension)
• path=<path> — exact path from vault root (e.g. folder/note.md)

When neither is given, the active file is used.

Content Escaping (Important)

When passing content to create, append, or prepend:

• Use \n for newlines, \t for tabs (the CLI interprets these sequences)
• Escape " inside the content string as \"
• Escape $ as \$ to prevent shell variable expansion
• Backticks inside content should be escaped as \`
• Content containing ! (e.g., Obsidian embedded links ![[file#heading]]) triggers bash history expansion, corrupting ! to \!. Prefix with set +H: set +H && obsidian create path="..." content="..." overwrite

Example — creating a note with frontmatter and body:

obsidian create path="00_Inbox/example.md" content="---\naliases:\ntags:\ndescription:\n---\n\n## Section\n\ncontent here" overwrite

Note Formatting Rules

When creating notes (obsidian create), follow the formatting rules defined in obsidian-notes:

• h1 → filename: If source content has # Title, use it as the filename and remove from content
• Frontmatter: Always include empty aliases:, tags:, description: fields — do NOT populate them
• Start from h2: Note body begins with ##, never #

Common Commands

# Read a file (returns full content)
obsidian read path="99_Tracking/Daily/2026-03-07.md"
obsidian read file="My Note"

# Create a file (overwrite if exists)
obsidian create path="00_Inbox/note.md" content="..." overwrite

# Append to a file
obsidian append path="00_Inbox/note.md" content="\n## New Section\n\ncontent"

# Search vault
obsidian search query="search term" limit=10
obsidian search:context query="term" limit=5

# List files in a folder
obsidian files folder="00_Inbox"

# List folders
obsidian folders

# Open a file in Obsidian
obsidian open path="99_Tracking/Weekly/2026-W10.md"

# Rename a file — routes through the running Obsidian app, so wikilinks
# pointing to the old name are auto-updated across the vault.
# `name=` is the new basename without the extension.
obsidian rename path="00_Inbox/old.md" name="new-basename"

# Move a file to another folder (wikilinks are auto-updated the same way)
obsidian move path="00_Inbox/old.md" to="02_Notes/"

# Daily note operations
obsidian daily:read
obsidian daily:append content="- [ ] New task"
obsidian daily:path

# Properties
obsidian property:set name="status" value="done" file="My Note"
obsidian property:read name="tags" file="My Note"

# Tags
obsidian tags sort=count counts

# Vault info
obsidian vault
obsidian files total

Vault Directory Structure

Directory	Purpose
00_Inbox/	Default destination for new files
99_Tracking/Daily/	Daily notes (YYYY-MM-DD.md)
99_Tracking/Weekly/	Weekly notes (YYYY-WNN.md)

Full directory listing: see obsidian-notes.

Run obsidian help to see all available commands with full parameter documentation.