vault

Overview

Obsidian vault operations for the PKOS knowledge graph at ~/Obsidian/PKOS/.

Execution Channel

This skill uses a dual-channel approach:

Primary: Obsidian CLI (obsidian-cli command) — when Obsidian is running, use CLI for all operations. Benefits: instant index updates, backlink tracking, search uses Obsidian's built-in engine.

Fallback: Direct file operations (Read/Write/Grep) — when Obsidian is not running or CLI is unavailable.

Channel Detection

At the start of every vault command, detect which channel to use:

obsidian-cli version 2>/dev/null

• Exit code 0 → use CLI channel
• Non-zero or command not found → use file fallback channel

Cache the result for the duration of the skill invocation (don't re-check per sub-operation).

Commands

Parse the user's intent to determine which operation to perform:

vault search <query>

CLI channel:

obsidian-cli search query="{query}" vault="PKOS" limit=20

Also search frontmatter:

obsidian-cli search-content query="tags:.*{query}" vault="PKOS" limit=10

File fallback:

Grep(pattern="{query}", path="~/Obsidian/PKOS", output_mode="content", context=2, head_limit=20)
Grep(pattern="tags:.*{query}", path="~/Obsidian/PKOS", output_mode="files_with_matches")

Also search frontmatter tags:

Grep(pattern="tags:.*{query}", path="~/Obsidian/PKOS", output_mode="files_with_matches")

Present results grouped by directory (10-Knowledge, 20-Ideas, etc.) with matched context.

vault read <path>

CLI channel:

obsidian-cli read file="{path}" vault="PKOS"

File fallback:

Read(file_path="~/Obsidian/PKOS/{path}")

If path is ambiguous: Glob(pattern="**/{path}*", path="~/Obsidian/PKOS")

vault write <path> <content>

CLI channel:

obsidian-cli create name="{title}" content="{content}" vault="PKOS" silent

For updates (file exists):

obsidian-cli append file="{path}" content="{content}" vault="PKOS"

Or for full replacement, use file fallback (CLI doesn't support full overwrite cleanly).

File fallback: Use the Write tool with ~/Obsidian/PKOS/{path}. Confirm before overwriting.

Ensure frontmatter is valid YAML if present.

vault frontmatter <path> [--set key=value]

CLI channel:

obsidian-cli property:set name="{key}" value="{value}" file="{path}" vault="PKOS"

File fallback: Parse YAML frontmatter manually as before.

vault stats

Vault statistics (file operations only — CLI doesn't expose aggregate stats):

echo "Notes by directory:"
for dir in 10-Knowledge 20-Ideas 30-Projects 40-People 50-References 60-Digests 70-Reviews 80-MOCs; do
  count=$(find ~/Obsidian/PKOS/$dir -name "*.md" 2>/dev/null | wc -l | tr -d '[:space:]')
  echo "  $dir: $count"
done

Total links:

Grep(pattern="\\[\\[", path="~/Obsidian/PKOS", output_mode="count")

Orphan detection:

For each note in 10-Knowledge, check if any other note links to it.

vault related <path>

Find notes related to a given note:

1. Read the note's frontmatter tags array
2. Search for other notes with overlapping tags
3. Rank by overlap count, return top 5

Grep(pattern="tags:.*{topic1}|tags:.*{topic2}", path="~/Obsidian/PKOS", output_mode="files_with_matches")

Vault Structure Reference

~/Obsidian/PKOS/
├── 00-Inbox/        ← Manual quick capture
├── 10-Knowledge/    ← Structured knowledge
├── 20-Ideas/        ← Product ideas
├── 30-Projects/     ← Active project notes
├── 40-People/       ← Key figure profiles
├── 50-References/   ← Articles, videos, domain-intel
├── 60-Digests/      ← Daily/weekly digests
├── 70-Reviews/      ← Weekly review records
├── 80-MOCs/         ← Maps of Content
└── Templates/       ← Note templates