Find Orphans
vault_find_orphansFind notes with no incoming links from other notes or canvases. Surface orphaned notes to integrate into your knowledge graph, with optional folder exclusions and a result limit.
Instructions
Find notes with no incoming links from other notes or canvases — orphans are disconnected from the knowledge graph and may be forgotten or need linking. A note that only links to itself still counts as an orphan (self-links are ignored).
Example: vault_find_orphans({})
When to use: Vault maintenance — surfacing notes to integrate into the graph. Link an orphan by mentioning it from a relevant note with vault_patch_note. Prefer vault_get_backlinks to check the connectivity of one specific note rather than scanning the whole vault.
Parameters:
With exclude_folders omitted, the defaults apply; the daily notes folder among them is re-read on each call: DAILY_NOTES_FOLDER, else .obsidian/daily-notes.json, else "Daily Notes" (also used when that file is unreadable). When that folder is the vault root or blank, no daily folder is excluded.
exclude_folders replaces the defaults, it does not add to them — list a default yourself to keep it (vault_get_daily_note's path starts with the daily notes folder whenever the defaults exclude one). Pass [] for no exclusions. Each entry names a whole folder, subfolders included ("Projects" also excludes "Projects/Archive" but not "ProjectsOld/"), ignoring ASCII letter case.
limit applies after exclusions and sorting by most recently modified. Nothing in the response signals truncation: exactly limit results may mean more exist, so raise limit to check.
Errors:
An empty array means no orphans were found (after exclusions), not an error.
"too many excluded folders" — pass a shorter exclude_folders list, then retry.
Returns: JSON array of note metadata (path, title, tags, related, folder, type, created, modified, bytes, leading_callout?, additional_properties?), sorted by most recently modified. bytes is the on-disk file size.
Input Schema
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| limit | No | Max results (default 50) | |
| exclude_folders | No | Folder paths to exclude (e.g. Projects; default: the daily notes folder, "Templates", "About Me") |