obsidian

Obsidian

Use this for local Obsidian vault work. An Obsidian vault is a normal folder of Markdown files plus .obsidian/ config.

Sources

• App config: ~/Library/Application Support/obsidian/obsidian.json
• Default vault name: obsidian
• Usual local vault path: ~/obsidian
• Official CLI: obsidian
• Vault commands resolve the vault from cwd; run them from ~/obsidian.

First Checks

command -v obsidian
obsidian version
obsidian vaults
cd ~/obsidian
obsidian commands filter=search:

Global commands like version and vaults work outside a vault. Vault-content commands may print Vault not found. outside ~/obsidian. Use obsidian commands, not obsidian help, for CLI discovery.

If obsidian says CLI is disabled:

1. Prefer asking the user to enable Settings -> General -> Advanced -> Command line interface.
2. If you already confirmed the app config shape, ~/Library/Application Support/obsidian/obsidian.json uses "cli": true.
3. Restart Obsidian after changing app-level CLI config.

Read Workflow

Prefer official CLI for Obsidian-aware lookups:

cd ~/obsidian
obsidian search query="OpenClaw" format=json
obsidian search:context query="OpenClaw" limit=20 format=json
obsidian read path="Folder/Note.md"
obsidian file path="Folder/Note.md"
obsidian outline path="Folder/Note.md" format=json
obsidian backlinks path="Folder/Note.md" format=json
obsidian links path="Folder/Note.md"
obsidian properties path="Folder/Note.md" format=json

Use direct filesystem reads when you already know the path and need exact bytes:

sed -n '1,220p' "$HOME/obsidian/Folder/Note.md"
rg -n "term" "$HOME/obsidian"

Report which source you used when freshness or vault choice matters.

Write Workflow

Choose the narrowest write path:

• New note: obsidian create path="Folder/Note.md" content="...".
• Append/prepend daily notes: obsidian daily:append content="...".
• Simple note edits: use apply_patch on the Markdown file.
• Rename/move notes: prefer obsidian move path="Old.md" to="Folder/New.md" so links can update.
• Opening UI after a write: add open only when useful or requested.

Common commands:

cd ~/obsidian
obsidian create path="Notes/New.md" content="# New\n\nBody"
obsidian append path="Notes/New.md" content="More text"
obsidian move path="Notes/New.md" to="Archive/New.md"
obsidian daily:path
obsidian daily:read
obsidian daily:append content="- Follow-up item"

For multi-line content, prefer editing the .md file with apply_patch once the path is known. Avoid fragile shell quoting for long prose.

Bases, Canvas, Plugins

Use CLI discovery first:

cd ~/obsidian
obsidian bases
obsidian base:views path="Projects.base"
obsidian base:query path="Projects.base" view="Active" format=json
obsidian plugins format=json
obsidian plugins:enabled format=json
obsidian commands filter=workspace:

For .canvas, .base, and .json files, read/edit as structured data when possible. Keep formatting stable and validate JSON after edits.

Safety

• Do not bulk rewrite the vault. Use targeted paths and review diffs.
• Do not edit .obsidian/ unless the user asks or the task is explicitly settings/plugin work.
• Do not delete notes unless explicitly asked; prefer trash over permanent delete.
• Do not create hidden dot-folder notes through the Obsidian URI/CLI path.
• Preserve frontmatter and wikilinks unless the task is to refactor them.
• If multiple vaults exist, do not guess; use obsidian vaults and obsidian.json.