markdown-publish — Claude Code plugin

Publish your Obsidian / Markdown vault as a website in one chat — then read it back through AI.

This plugin bundles two things that work together:

Both are powered by the markdown-publish static-site engine: an Obsidian vault → a fast, searchable site with backlinks, a knowledge graph, and canvas boards.

Install

From Claude Code:

/plugin marketplace add abstractwebunit/markdown-publish-plugin
/plugin install markdown-publish

That gives you the /publish-vault skill and the markdown-publish MCP server.

Related MCP server: Obsidian Tools MCP Server

1. Publish a vault — the publish-vault skill

You: publish my Obsidian vault at ~/Notes

Claude walks you through it and always shows a plain-language summary before anything is created:

Готов опубликовать твой vault. Вот что получится:

  📁 Заметки из:   /home/me/Notes
  🌐 Адрес сайта:  https://me.github.io/notes/
  📦 Репозиторий:  github.com/me/notes  (публичный, создам новый)
  🏷  Название:     Notes
  🌍 Язык:         ru

Публикуем? (да / изменить / отмена)

Say да and it:

1. validates the build locally (catches a broken vault early),

2. creates a new public GitHub repo in your account,

3. commits your vault + a GitHub Actions workflow,

4. enables GitHub Pages and waits for the build,

5. hands you the live URL.

Everything runs under your GitHub login — no backend, no cost, you own it.

Requirements: the gh CLI installed and authenticated (gh auth login).

2. Read your notes from AI — the MCP server

Once your vault is live (or even a local build), connect it to an AI client by setting one environment variable to your site:

MARKDOWN_PUBLISH_SOURCE = https://me.github.io/notes/

It also accepts a local directory (a built site / bundle root) so you can query notes before publishing:

MARKDOWN_PUBLISH_SOURCE = /path/to/built-site

Now the AI has four tools over your vault:

You: what did I write about dopamine in my notes?

Claude: (calls search_notes("dopamine") → get_note(...)) In your note "Habits & Reward" you wrote… [links to your real notes]

Manual MCP config (without the plugin)

The server is a single zero-dependency Node file. Any MCP client config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "markdown-publish": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["/path/to/markdown-publish-plugin/mcp/server.mjs"],
      "env": { "MARKDOWN_PUBLISH_SOURCE": "https://me.github.io/notes/" }
    }
  }
}

You can also pass the source as a flag: node mcp/server.mjs --source <url|dir>.

How it fits together

   ~/Notes  ──/publish-vault──▶  github.com/you/notes  ──Actions──▶  GitHub Pages
   (vault)        (skill)            (your repo)         (engine)      (live site)
                                                                          │
                                                            content/*.json bundle
                                                                          │
                                          MARKDOWN_PUBLISH_SOURCE ──▶  MCP server
                                                                          │
                                              Claude Desktop / Cursor / Claude Code

The published site emits a machine-readable content/ bundle (search-index.json, notes/<slug>.json, graph.json). The MCP server reads exactly those files — over HTTP for a published site, or from disk for a local build.

Links

• Engine & CLI: github.com/abstractwebunit/markdown-publish

• Docs (6 languages): abstractwebunit.github.io/markdown-publish-docs

• Starter template: github.com/abstractwebunit/markdown-publish-template

License

MIT. Not affiliated with Obsidian.MD.