Obsidian

Use the official obsidian CLI for Obsidian-aware vault operations. Vault notes are Markdown, so direct file reads and edits are appropriate when the exact vault path is known and the change does not require Obsidian to update links or metadata.

Prerequisites

• Obsidian 1.12.7 or newer is installed.
• Settings > General > Command line interface is enabled.
• obsidian is registered on PATH.
• Obsidian is running; the CLI connects to the desktop application.

Check without changing the vault:

obsidian version
obsidian help

If the CLI is absent, explain how to enable the official CLI in Obsidian. Do not silently install a third-party obsidian-cli package.

Vault selection

Multiple vaults are common. Use vault="<name>" when the target is ambiguous, and ask the user to choose rather than guessing. Prefer path="Folder/Note.md" for exact vault-relative resolution; file=<name> uses Obsidian's name-based resolution.

Do not edit .obsidian/ configuration unless the user explicitly requested a settings or plugin change. Avoid reading or exposing unrelated notes from a private vault.

Command pattern

obsidian <command> [name=value] [flag]
obsidian vault="Notes" search query="meeting notes" format=json

Quote parameter values containing spaces. Prefer structured output such as format=json when available.

Open and read

obsidian open file=Recipe
obsidian open path="Inbox/Idea.md" newtab
obsidian read
obsidian read file=Recipe

Search

obsidian search query="TODO" matches
obsidian search query="status::active" format=json
obsidian search:open query="project notes"

Create and modify

obsidian create name="New Note"
obsidian create path="Inbox/Idea.md" content="# Idea"
obsidian append file=Note content="New line"
obsidian prepend file=Note content="After frontmatter"