MCP server for Obsidian
- Note Taking
MCP server to interact with Obsidian via the Local REST API community plugin.
Prompts
Interactive templates invoked by user choice
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
No prompts | |
Resources
Contextual data attached and managed by the client
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
No resources | |
Tools
Functions exposed to the LLM to take actions
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| list_files_in_dir | Lists all files and directories that exist in a specific Obsidian directory. |
| list_files_in_vault | Lists all files and directories in the root directory of your Obsidian vault. |
| get_file_contents | Return the content of a single file in your vault. |
| simple_search | Simple search for documents matching a specified text query across all files in the vault. Use this tool when you want to do a simple text search |
| patch_content | Insert content into an existing note relative to a heading, block reference, or frontmatter field. |
| append_content | Append content to a new or existing file in the vault. |
| complex_search | Complex search for documents using a JsonLogic query. Supports standard JsonLogic operators plus 'glob' and 'regexp' for pattern matching. Results must be non-falsy. Use this tool when you want to do a complex search, e.g. for all documents with certain tags etc. |
Server Configuration
Describes the environment variables required to run the server.
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| OBSIDIAN_API_KEY | Yes | Your Obsidian REST API key |
MCP server for Obsidian
MCP server to interact with Obsidian via the Local REST API community plugin.
Components
Tools
The server implements multiple tools to interact with Obsidian:
- list_files_in_vault: Lists all files and directories in the root directory of your Obsidian vault
- list_files_in_dir: Lists all files and directories in a specific Obsidian directory
- get_file_contents: Return the content of a single file in your vault.
- search: Search for documents matching a specified text query across all files in the vault
- patch_content: Insert content into an existing note relative to a heading, block reference, or frontmatter field.
- append_content: Append content to a new or existing file in the vault.
Example prompts
Its good to first instruct Claude to use Obsidian. Then it will always call the tool.
The use prompts like this:
- Get the contents of the last architecture call note and summarize them
- Search for all files where Azure CosmosDb is mentioned and quickly explain to me the context in which it is mentioned
- Summarize the last meeting notes and put them into a new note 'summary meeting.md'. Add an introduction so that I can send it via email.
Configuration
Obsidian REST API Key
There are two ways to configure the environment with the Obsidian REST API Key.
- Add to server config (preferred)
- Create a
.envfile in the working directory with the following required variable:
Note: You can find the key in the Obsidian plugin config.
Quickstart
Install
Obsidian REST API
You need the Obsidian REST API community plugin running: https://github.com/coddingtonbear/obsidian-local-rest-api
Install and enable it in the settings and copy the api key.
Claude Desktop
On MacOS: ~/Library/Application\ Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
On Windows: %APPDATA%/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
Development
Building
To prepare the package for distribution:
- Sync dependencies and update lockfile:
Debugging
Since MCP servers run over stdio, debugging can be challenging. For the best debugging experience, we strongly recommend using the MCP Inspector.
You can launch the MCP Inspector via npm with this command:
Upon launching, the Inspector will display a URL that you can access in your browser to begin debugging.
You can also watch the server logs with this command:
GitHub Badge
Glama performs regular codebase and documentation scans to:
- Confirm that the MCP server is working as expected.
- Confirm that there are no obvious security issues with dependencies of the server.
- Extract server characteristics such as tools, resources, prompts, and required parameters.
Our directory badge helps users to quickly asses that the MCP server is safe, server capabilities, and instructions for installing the server.
Copy the following code to your README.md file: