MCP Obsidian

🚀 Obsidian's MCP Server

The MCP server is used to interact with Obsidian through the Local REST API of the Obsidian community plugin.

✨ Features

Tools

This server implements multiple tools to interact with Obsidian:

• list_files_in_vault: List all files and directories in the root directory of the vault.
• list_files_in_dir: List all files and directories in a specific Obsidian directory.
• get_file_contents: Return the content of a single file in the vault.
• search: Search for documents that match the specified text query in all files in the vault.
• patch_content: Insert content into an existing note relative to a title, block quote, or front matter field.
• append_content: Append content to a new or existing file.
• delete_file: Delete a file or directory from the vault.

Example Prompts

First, instruct Claude to use Obsidian, and then it will always call the tools. Use the following prompts:

• Get the content of the last architecture call notes and summarize them.
• Search for all files that mention Azure CosmosDb and briefly explain its context.
• Summarize the last meeting minutes and put them into a new note'summary meeting.md'. Add an introduction so that I can send it via email.

📦 Installation

Obsidian REST API Key

There are two ways to configure the environment to use the Obsidian REST API key.

1. Add it to the server configuration (recommended)

{
  "mcp-obsidian": {
    "command": "uvx",
    "args": [
      "mcp-obsidian"
    ],
    "env": {
      "OBSIDIAN_API_KEY": "<your_api_key_here>",
      "OBSIDIAN_HOST": "<your_obsidian_host>"
    }
  }
}

2. Create a .env file in the working directory containing the following required variables:

OBSIDIAN_API_KEY=your_api_key_here
OBSIDIAN_HOST=your_obsidian_host

Note: You can find the key in the Obsidian plugin configuration.

🚀 Quick Start

Installation

Obsidian REST API

The Obsidian REST API community plugin that needs to be run should be installed and enabled: https://github.com/coddingtonbear/obsidian-local-rest-api. Install and enable it in the settings, then copy the API key.

Claude Desktop

On MacOS: ~/Library/Application\ 支持/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json On Windows: %APPDATA%/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json%

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "mcp-obsidian": {
      "command": "uv",
      "args": [
        "--directory",
        "<dir_to>/mcp-obsidian",
        "run",
        "mcp-obsidian"
      ]
    }
  }
}

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "mcp-obsidian": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": [
        "mcp-obsidian"
      ],
      "env": {
        "OBSIDIAN_API_KEY" : "<YOUR_OBSIDIAN_API_KEY>"
      }
    }
  }
}

🔧 Technical Details

Building

To prepare the distribution package:

1. Synchronize dependencies and update the lock file:

uv sync

Debugging

Since the MCP server runs through stdio, debugging can be challenging. For the best debugging experience, we highly recommend using the MCP Inspector. You can start the MCP Inspector with the following command:

npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector uv --directory /path/to/mcp-obsidian run mcp-obsidian

After starting, the inspector will display a URL that you can access in your browser to start debugging. You can also view the server logs with the following command:

tail -n 20 -f ~/Library/Logs/Claude/mcp-server-mcp-obsidian.log