obsidian-memory

A set of rules for saving and retrieving durable engineering notes in a local Obsidian vault, a folder of linked Markdown notes.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it before substantial work to read relevant project context, and after meaningful work to record sessions, decisions, and project updates.
Why use it?
It helps preserve project context, past decisions, and work history between coding sessions without relying on memory or repeated explanations.

Cursor rule for Cursor

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add rules/jmjava/obsidian-mcp/obsidian-memory
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/jmjava/obsidian-mcp

Made for: Cursor.

Per session 423 This file is loaded in full into every session.
When invoked 423 The same file — it is already loaded in full.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00423 $0.00423
Opus 5 $0.00211 $0.00211
Sonnet 5 $0.00085 $0.00085
Haiku 4.5 $0.00042 $0.00042

Measured today against content hash 6a709cf3edfe, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

obsidian-memory scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured today.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

.cursor/rules/obsidian-memory.mdc · 71 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 71 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Obsidian Developer Memory

Use the obsidian-dev-memory MCP tools to keep durable engineering memory in the local Obsidian vault. Obsidian does not need to be running.

Before substantial work

Call get_project_context when existing project memory is likely to improve the work: continuing a feature, debugging a known area, making an architecture change, or answering "why is it like this?"

Do not call it for trivial edits.

After meaningful work

Call capture_work_session after a meaningful implementation, investigation, debugging session, migration, architecture change, or research task.

Do not create a memory entry for:

  • typo fixes
  • formatting-only changes
  • trivial comments
  • one-line mechanical edits

Prefer appending to today's session note over creating duplicate notes.

Durable decisions

Call record_decision when an architectural or engineering decision is made that future work should know about.

Examples:

  • selected authentication architecture
  • changed API boundaries
  • selected persistence mechanism
  • changed deployment strategy
  • chose one library over another for a durable reason

If a decision file with the same generated name already exists, the server adds a numeric suffix instead of overwriting.

Project state

Call update_project_state when the overall project state materially changes. Keep that file concise. It is current state, not a session log.

Memory lookup

Call search_memory before guessing about prior decisions. Use read_note only for a specific vault-relative Markdown path.

Daily notes

Use append_daily_note for short useful items that belong on today's vault daily note. Never overwrite existing daily-note contents.

Security

Never persist:

  • passwords
  • API keys
  • access tokens
  • refresh tokens
  • JWT values
  • private keys
  • .env contents
  • database credentials
  • production secrets
  • sensitive customer data

If a work summary contains secret-looking material, summarize it generically rather than persisting the literal value.

Read the full file on GitHub · 71 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. today First seen · 71 lines · 423 tokens per session scan A 6a709cf3edfe

Subscribe to this mod's changes

obsidian-memory is a cursor rule published in the GitHub repository jmjava/obsidian-mcp (0 stars, last pushed 9d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 423 tokens to every session, about $0.0021 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.