Content
# MCP server for Obsidian
MCP server to interact with Obsidian via the Local REST API community plugin.
<a href="https://glama.ai/mcp/servers/3wko1bhuek"><img width="380" height="200" src="https://glama.ai/mcp/servers/3wko1bhuek/badge" alt="server for Obsidian MCP server" /></a>
## Components
### Tools
The server implements multiple tools to interact with Obsidian:
- list_files_in_vault: Lists all files and directories in the root directory of your Obsidian vault
- list_files_in_dir: Lists all files and directories in a specific Obsidian directory
- get_file_contents: Return the content of a single file in your vault.
- search: Search for documents matching a specified text query across all files in the vault
- patch_content: Insert content into an existing note relative to a heading, block reference, or frontmatter field.
- append_content: Append content to a new or existing file in the vault.
- delete_file: Delete a file or directory from your vault.
### Example prompts
Its good to first instruct Claude to use Obsidian. Then it will always call the tool.
The use prompts like this:
- Get the contents of the last architecture call note and summarize them
- Search for all files where Azure CosmosDb is mentioned and quickly explain to me the context in which it is mentioned
- Summarize the last meeting notes and put them into a new note 'summary meeting.md'. Add an introduction so that I can send it via email.
## Configuration
### Obsidian REST API Key
There are two ways to configure the environment with the Obsidian REST API Key.
1. Add to server config (preferred)
```json
{
"mcp-obsidian": {
"command": "uvx",
"args": [
"mcp-obsidian"
],
"env": {
"OBSIDIAN_API_KEY": "<your_api_key_here>",
"OBSIDIAN_HOST": "<your_obsidian_host>",
"OBSIDIAN_PORT": "<your_obsidian_port>"
}
}
}
```
Sometimes Claude has issues detecting the location of uv / uvx. You can use `which uvx` to find and paste the full path in above config in such cases.
2. Create a `.env` file in the working directory with the following required variables:
```
OBSIDIAN_API_KEY=your_api_key_here
OBSIDIAN_HOST=your_obsidian_host
OBSIDIAN_PORT=your_obsidian_port
```
Note:
- You can find the API key in the Obsidian plugin config
- Default port is 27124 if not specified
- Default host is 127.0.0.1 if not specified
## Quickstart
### Install
#### Obsidian REST API
You need the Obsidian REST API community plugin running: https://github.com/coddingtonbear/obsidian-local-rest-api
Install and enable it in the settings and copy the api key.
#### Claude Desktop
On MacOS: `~/Library/Application\ Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json`
On Windows: `%APPDATA%/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json`
<details>
<summary>Development/Unpublished Servers Configuration</summary>
```json
{
"mcpServers": {
"mcp-obsidian": {
"command": "uv",
"args": [
"--directory",
"<dir_to>/mcp-obsidian",
"run",
"mcp-obsidian"
],
"env": {
"OBSIDIAN_API_KEY": "<your_api_key_here>",
"OBSIDIAN_HOST": "<your_obsidian_host>",
"OBSIDIAN_PORT": "<your_obsidian_port>"
}
}
}
}
```
</details>
<details>
<summary>Published Servers Configuration</summary>
```json
{
"mcpServers": {
"mcp-obsidian": {
"command": "uvx",
"args": [
"mcp-obsidian"
],
"env": {
"OBSIDIAN_API_KEY": "<YOUR_OBSIDIAN_API_KEY>",
"OBSIDIAN_HOST": "<your_obsidian_host>",
"OBSIDIAN_PORT": "<your_obsidian_port>"
}
}
}
}
```
</details>
## Development
### Building
To prepare the package for distribution:
1. Sync dependencies and update lockfile:
```bash
uv sync
```
### Debugging
Since MCP servers run over stdio, debugging can be challenging. For the best debugging
experience, we strongly recommend using the [MCP Inspector](https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/inspector).
You can launch the MCP Inspector via [`npm`](https://docs.npmjs.com/downloading-and-installing-node-js-and-npm) with this command:
```bash
npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector uv --directory /path/to/mcp-obsidian run mcp-obsidian
```
Upon launching, the Inspector will display a URL that you can access in your browser to begin debugging.
You can also watch the server logs with this command:
```bash
tail -n 20 -f ~/Library/Logs/Claude/mcp-server-mcp-obsidian.log
```
Connection Info
You Might Also Like
markitdown
Python tool for converting files and office documents to Markdown.
Fetch
Retrieve and process content from web pages by converting HTML into markdown format.
oh-my-opencode
Background agents · Curated agents like oracle, librarians, frontend...
chatbox
User-friendly Desktop Client App for AI Models/LLMs (GPT, Claude, Gemini, Ollama...)
continue
Continue is an open-source project for seamless server management.
semantic-kernel
Build and deploy intelligent AI agents with Semantic Kernel's orchestration...