obsidian-cli

Obsidian CLI — Claude Code Skill

A skill for AI coding agents that enables full control of Obsidian vaults from the terminal using the official Obsidian CLI (v1.12+).

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What This Skill Does

Once installed, your AI agent will know how to interact with Obsidian vaults through the official CLI — reading, creating, and editing notes; managing daily notes; running full-text search; querying tasks, tags, links, and properties; managing plugins and sync; and running developer tools.

Covers 130+ commands across all major areas:

Area	Commands
Files	read, create, append, prepend, move, rename, delete, files, folders, file, random
Daily Notes	daily, daily:read, daily:append, daily:prepend, daily:path
Search	search, search:context with scoping, limits, JSON output
Properties	properties, property:read, property:set, property:remove, aliases
Tags	tags, tag with counts and filtering
Tasks	tasks, task — query, filter, toggle
Links	backlinks, links, unresolved, orphans, deadends
Bookmarks	bookmarks, bookmark
Templates	templates, template:read, template:insert
Plugins	plugins, plugin, plugin:enable/disable/install/uninstall, plugins:restrict
Sync	sync, sync:status, sync:history, sync:read, sync:restore, sync:deleted
Themes	themes, theme, theme:set, theme:install/uninstall
Snippets	snippets, snippets:enabled, snippet:enable/disable
Commands	commands, command, hotkeys, hotkey
Bases	bases, base:query, base:views, base:create
History	history, history:list, history:read, history:restore
Workspace	workspace, tabs, tab:open
Diff	diff
Developer	eval, dev:screenshot, dev:debug, dev:console, dev:errors, dev:css, dev:dom, devtools
Vault	vault, vaults, version, reload, restart, recents, outline, wordcount

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Invoking the Skill

The skill activates automatically when your request clearly involves Obsidian vault operations. For casual phrasing, you may need to invoke it explicitly:

Method	Example
Natural language (usually works)	"add this to my daily note: …", "search my vault for X"
Explicit prefix (always works)	$obsidian-cli append to today's daily note: "…"
Strict mode (always active)	Enable in Claude Code settings so the skill is always loaded

If Claude tries to answer a vault request without executing any commands, just say use obsidian-cli and it will retry with the skill active.

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Prerequisites

Obsidian v1.12 is available to all users — no Early Access build or Catalyst license required.

Requirement	Details
Obsidian Desktop	v1.12.0+
CLI enabled	Settings → Command line interface → Toggle ON
Obsidian running	The desktop app must be running — the CLI communicates over IPC

Platform notes

• macOS / Linux — the obsidian binary is added to PATH automatically when you enable CLI in settings.
• Windows — requires an Obsidian.com redirector file placed alongside Obsidian.exe. Must run from a normal-privilege terminal — admin terminals produce silent failures.
• Headless Linux — use the .deb package (not snap). Run under xvfb and prefix commands with DISPLAY=:5. Set PrivateTmp=false if running as a systemd service.

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Installation

Claude Code — Plugin (native)

Option A — Marketplace install (recommended):

/plugin marketplace add https://github.com/pablo-mano/Obsidian-CLI-skill
/plugin install obsidian-cli

Done — see Invoking the Skill above for how to activate it.

Option B — Direct plugin load:

1. Clone this repository:

   git clone https://github.com/pablo-mano/Obsidian-CLI-skill
   

2. Load the plugin with the --plugin-dir flag:

   claude --plugin-dir ./Obsidian-CLI-skill
   

Option C — Persistent via settings.json:

Add to your project's .claude/settings.json:

{
  "plugins": {
    "obsidian-cli": {
      "source": { "source": "github", "repo": "pablo-mano/Obsidian-CLI-skill" }
    }
  }
}

The .claude-plugin/marketplace.json manifest makes this repository compatible with Claude Code's marketplace system.

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