read_note

Read a note from the Obsidian vault by its relative path.

Returns a structured result, not a rendered document. Metadata and note content sit in separate fields, so there is no envelope to parse and no textual procedure to get wrong — read the fields:

• content — the selected note text. Whole-note reads: the body with a valid YAML frontmatter block stripped, which is exactly what edit_note(path, content) full replacement accepts. Section reads: the section's body only, which is exactly what edit_note(path, content, section=...) accepts. Pass it straight back; do not add, strip or split anything.

• heading — section reads only: the matched heading line, with no line terminator. It is not part of content, and a section write must not be sent it — the heading line is never rewritten.

• path, title, tags — metadata as data.

• frontmatter_yaml — the frontmatter block's YAML source, fence lines excluded, LF-normalized (a CRLF or lone-CR block comes back with LF terminators — the same declared residual content carries, because this tool normalises and the write tools work on raw bytes; edit_note still reattaches the original block byte-identically). This is the authoritative copy. frontmatter is a best-effort JSON view of the same block for convenience and may be absent — dates, non-string keys, recursive aliases and unpaired-surrogate escapes have no faithful JSON form, and metadata_omissions then says which and why. To change frontmatter use set_frontmatter, or edit the raw block with edit_note(find=...); never write back a round trip of the JSON view.

• truncated, offset, next_offset, total_chars — truncation as data. outline (whole-note reads that were truncated) lists every section with its #N ordinal so you can fetch the one you want directly, and notice carries the guidance in prose.

• metadata_omissions — any metadata field this response had to drop, and why. Nothing is ever signalled by a marker inside a field.

• error — set when the read failed (missing note, bad offset/limit, unknown section). It is a normal result, not a transport error, and the content-bearing fields are absent beside it.

Budgets are per field, not per response: content is bounded by the server's response cap, the outline by its own equal budget, and the metadata fields by a third — so a truncated whole-note read can carry several capped components. Read the one section you need with section= rather than paging a large note.

Round trips. A whole-note content is byte-exact input for edit_note(path, content) only when the read is complete and unwindowed (offset=0 and truncated false); a truncated read must be paged to the end first, or full replacement replaces the whole body with the fragment. A section content is byte-exact input for edit_note(section=...) under the same completeness condition. Byte-identity holds for notes whose body newlines are LF: terminators inside the selected content come back as LF, because this tool normalises and the write tools rewrite raw bytes.

Args: path: Vault-relative path to the note (e.g. "Cards/My Note.md") section: Optional ATX heading to read instead of the whole note. Plain text ("Balance Sheet"), a path-style chain ("Parent/Child") when the heading appears under different parents, or a "#N" ordinal ("#7", 1-based document order) — the ordinal is the only form that can address duplicate headings sharing the same parent. The outline returned with a truncated note carries the ordinal for every section. A bare "#N" always selects by position and is never shadowed by a heading whose text happens to be "#N"; use "Parent/#N" to reach such a heading by title. offset: Character offset to start reading from (default 0). Use the next_offset the response reports to continue. limit: Maximum characters of content to return. Only lowers the server cap; it cannot raise it.