Supports optional git sync of the vault, with debounced commits and token-authenticated pushes to a remote repository.
Click on "Deploy Server".
Wait a few minutes for the server to deploy. Once ready, it will show a "Started" state.
In the chat, type @ followed by the MCP server name and your instructions, e.g., "@gosidian search my vault for meeting notes from last week"
That's it! The server will respond to your query, and you can continue using it as needed.
Here is a step-by-step guide with screenshots.
Markdown notes your AI agents can read, write, and reason over — via MCP.
A self-contained markdown vault with a built-in MCP server. Humans
edit through a web UI, agents talk to it over MCP, everything lives
in plain .md files that Obsidian (and every other markdown tool)
reads natively.
Listed on the official MCP Registry
as io.github.daniele-chiappa/gosidian,
Glama and
mcpservers.org
Launch a free, throwaway gosidian in
GitHub Codespaces — no install,
running on your own Codespaces quota. It builds from source, seeds a small
demo vault, and opens the web UI. Log in with demo /
gosidian-demo.
Related MCP server: Markdown Memory Context MCP Server
docker run -d --name gosidian \
-p 8080:8080 \
-v "$(pwd)/vault:/vault" \
ghcr.io/daniele-chiappa/gosidian:latest
# open http://localhost:8080, create admin, copy the MCP token from /admin/tokens
claude mcp add gosidian http://localhost:8080/mcp \
--transport http --header "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN"Three commands: Docker up → token created from the web UI → agent
wired. Your .md vault is persisted under ./vault/; stop the
container and the files are still there.
Other installation paths (source, custom compose, bare-metal): docs/getting-started.md.
A markdown vault. Notes are .md files on disk. Open the same
folder in Obsidian, VS Code, vim, or any editor you already use.
Zero lock-in: delete .gosidian/ and you have a pure Obsidian
vault.
An MCP server. 57 typed tools let agents bootstrap a session, ingest files, search, read, write, link, handoff, self-check, audit. Bearer tokens and OAuth grants, each narrowed on every request to what its account may read and write.
A web UI. A Vue 3 single-page app served from the same binary
(built with Vite, embedded via go:embed). Notes, graph, search and
config forms open as windows in a tiling "plancia" workspace —
full-text search, backlinks, graph view, editor with live preview,
audit trail, admin pages for tokens and users.
All three views hit the same files on disk. The SQLite FTS5 index is a cache — drop it and it rebuilds.
AI engineers wiring agents that need persistent structured memory: note-taking, plans, skills, ADRs, handoffs, audit.
Obsidian users who want a programmable layer on top of a vault they already trust.
Teams sharing one vault: per-project visibility and grants to accounts and teams, restricted new accounts with their own project, self-service tokens per agent that never outrun their owner.
vs RAG / vector search: gosidian retrieves by identity (path, tag, frontmatter, backlinks) — more predictable than similarity search for an agent's working memory. Semantic search is deliberately deferred: see ADR-007 rationale.
vs Obsidian Sync: Sync mirrors a vault between human devices. gosidian adds a typed automation surface (MCP) to the same vault. Not competitive — complementary.
vs Notion / Roam: hosted or proprietary formats; migration is
a project. gosidian's vault is already .md files you can take
anywhere.
FAQ covers the long form.
The "markdown vault + agents" space is crowded. This is where gosidian sits and where it doesn't, as of September 2026:
If you are looking at… | What those projects do | Where gosidian differs |
Obsidian MCP bridges — mcp-obsidian, obsidian-local-rest-api, wrappers around the Obsidian CLI | Expose a running Obsidian desktop app to agents over MCP. | Headless server: no Obsidian process needed, runs on a box or in a container, multi-user with roles, per-project visibility and grants (accounts and teams), tokens narrowed to each account, audit trail. The vault stays a plain Obsidian vault. |
Markdown memory servers — basic-memory, mcp-vault | Same "files, not a database" idea; usually add hybrid semantic search, a cloud tier or WebDAV sync. | Ships a full web UI, real multi-user, an agent handoff bus and a server-served working method (versioned directives, lint, stale detection). No semantic search by design (ADR-007), no hosted tier. |
Client-side wiki skills — obsidian-wiki and the "LLM Wiki" pattern | Slash-commands the agent runs locally to compile and maintain a wiki. No server, no auth, no UI. | The same pattern implemented server-side and agent-agnostic: one-call scaffold, directives served at bootstrap, handoffs, audit. Complementary: those skills work against a gosidian vault too. |
Agent memory services — mem0, agentmemory, mcp-memory-service | Memory as an opaque store: embeddings, recall benchmarks, auto-capture hooks. | Memory is markdown that humans read in Obsidian or the web UI; no embeddings, no LLM calls in the binary, retrieval by identity and graph. Auto-capture through Claude Code hooks ( |
Note apps with community MCP servers — SilverBullet, Trilium, SiYuan | Mature editors, mobile apps, sometimes real-time collaboration; MCP added by third-party servers on top of their API. | MCP-first: the server is in the binary, behind the same login, roles and audit as the UI. No mobile app, no real-time collaboration, no WYSIWYG editor. |
Honest gaps, in the order they come up: semantic / hybrid search (deferred, see the FAQ), mobile sync beyond git, real-time collaboration, a hosted offering. The roadmap says which of these are planned.
Single binary, ≤50 MB, Alpine-based Docker image
Web UI: a Vue 3 SPA (Vite, Pinia, Tailwind, CodeMirror, Cytoscape), embedded in the binary — editor + live preview, sidebar, search, graph view, attachments, audit log, admin pages
Plancia tiling window manager (niri-style): notes, graph, search and config forms open as resizable, side-by-side windows in a horizontally-scrollable workspace, restorable from the URL
MCP server over Streamable HTTP (legacy HTTP+SSE kept) with 57 typed tools
Bearer tokens with scopes (read / write) and per-project
restriction — including multi-project tokens for orchestrators;
every token owned by an account is narrowed on each request to what
that account may read and write, accounts mint their own (inherit
follows their access, custom pins a subset), cascade-revoke on
user disable
Agent orchestration bus: handoff notes with an atomic
claim/complete lifecycle, server-stamped identity, and a
memory_wait_changes long-poll change feed — a minimal multi-agent
task queue where everything stays plain markdown
Multi-user web login with roles (Admin / User / Read-only) as the ceiling, per-project visibility (private / internal / public) for reading and grants (read / write / admin) to accounts and teams for everything else, delegated to project admins; new accounts start restricted with a personal project of their own; invite-only signup (24h TTL)
Optional TOTP two-factor (global mode + per-user override) and LDAP / Active Directory login with guest auto-provisioning
Opt-in OAuth 2.1 authorization server so claude.ai / Claude Desktop custom connectors, ChatGPT connectors and Claude Code's browser login get their own tokens through a consent screen — no pasted bearer
Claude Code hooks (contrib/claude-code/):
the project's hot.md focus injected at every session start, a
digest of the session appended to the vault at compaction and at the
end — no LLM, over POST /mcp/append, never blocking the session
Optional git sync (debounced commits, push with token auth)
SQLite FTS5 full-text search + ETag optimistic locking
First-class .html notes, rendered in a sandboxed iframe (off by
default, opt-in per project)
Graph analytics over the wikilink graph: memory_hubs (most-linked
notes) and memory_path (shortest path between two notes)
Opt-in self-improve loop: agents record usage-friction insights per token, off by default
Print / Save-as-PDF for any markdown note straight from the web UI
Internationalization (IT + EN complete; ES / FR / DE scaffolding)
Light & dark theme presets (Catppuccin, Tokyo Night, Solarized) + custom palette
Opinionated Karpathy-Wiki-Stack project layout with one-call scaffolding
Optional global projects for skills, agents & scaffold templates shared across projects (opt-in per project, local-overrides-global)
Area | Start here |
Install + configure | |
MCP integration | Overview, Tool catalogue, Authentication, Client setup, Agent patterns, Claude Code hooks |
Web UI | |
Vault | Format, Conventions, Multi-project, Global projects, Obsidian compatibility |
Internals | |
Common questions |
Full index: docs/README.md.
Contributions welcome. See CONTRIBUTING.md for the workflow, test expectations, and translation guidelines.
Security issues are reported privately. See SECURITY.md for the disclosure process.
Released under the MIT License.
PROJECT-STORY.md — project genesis, design philosophy, and a comparison with Obsidian / Logseq / RAG-based knowledge stacks.
CHANGELOG.md — release history.
This server cannot be deployed
Agent-native notes, tasks, dev-docs, vaults, sync & handoffs. MCP + OpenAPI dual surface.
Search and reason over your Obsidian-style Markdown vault, right from ChatGPT.
Personal context for every AI: search, read, and write back to your private Markdown library.
Search, read, and safely update Markdown notes in your connected Phasoric knowledge vaults.
