obsidian-cli

A command-line tool for managing an Obsidian vault, which is a folder of linked notes in the Obsidian app. It can work with notes, searches, tasks, tags, links, properties, templates, and files.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to find notes, create daily notes, update tasks or properties, apply templates, inspect links, and manage vault files.
Why use it?
It lets scripts and coding agents use Obsidian's indexed searches and note features instead of editing files without understanding the vault.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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 skills/alteredcraft/claude-code-plugins/obsidian-cli
Any agent
npx skills add AlteredCraft/claude-code-plugins --skill obsidian-cli
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/AlteredCraft/claude-code-plugins

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 85 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 3,081 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
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 $0.00085 $0.03081
Opus 5 $0.00043 $0.01541
Sonnet 5 $0.00017 $0.00616
Haiku 4.5 $0.00009 $0.00308

Measured 2d ago against content hash be5fad0a5f7b, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

obsidian-cli 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 2d ago.

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.

plugins/obsidian-cli/skills/obsidian-cli/SKILL.md · 392 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 392 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Obsidian CLI — Knowledge Management Skill

Use the obsidian CLI to interact with a running Obsidian instance from the terminal. The CLI connects to the running app and provides access to Obsidian-native capabilities: search indexing, the link graph, template variable resolution, frontmatter-aware property management, and task checkbox semantics.

Prerequisites

  • Obsidian 1.12+ must be running (CLI connects to the running instance)
  • CLI enabled: Settings > General > Enable "Command line interface"
  • Binary: /Applications/Obsidian.app/Contents/MacOS/obsidian (added to PATH via ~/.zprofile)

If the CLI returns connection errors, ask the user to ensure Obsidian is running.

When to Use CLI vs. Native Tools

Use the Obsidian CLI for:

Capability Why CLI wins
Search Uses Obsidian's indexed search — faster, respects aliases and tags
Backlinks / orphans / deadends Requires Obsidian's link graph
Tasks Checkbox semantics — toggle, done, todo, custom status characters
Properties Frontmatter-aware — typed values (date, list, checkbox, number)
Templates Variable resolution ({{date}}, {{time}}, {{title}})
Daily notes Respects daily note plugin settings (folder, format, template)
Outline / word count Parsed heading tree, accurate word counts
Version history Access Obsidian's file recovery and sync history

Use native tools (Read, Write, Grep, Glob) for:

  • Bulk file reads or multi-file edits
  • Regex-based content search across many files
  • File creation without templates
  • Structural code or markdown changes
  • Reading file contents when you need line numbers for Edit tool

Combine both when appropriate — e.g., use CLI search to find relevant files, then Read to inspect and Edit to modify.

Syntax Conventions

obsidian <command> [parameter=value ...] [flags ...]
  • Parameters take values: parameter=value or parameter="value with spaces"
  • Flags are boolean switches with no value: silent, overwrite, total, verbose
  • Multiline content: use \n for newline, \t for tab
  • Vault targeting: vault=<name> must be the first parameter: obsidian vault=Notes daily
  • File targeting: file=<name> resolves like wikilinks (name without path/extension); path=<path> requires exact path from vault root
  • Copy output: add --copy to any command to copy output to clipboard
  • Output formats: many commands support format=json|text|csv|tsv|md|yaml|paths

Read the full file on GitHub · 392 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. 2d ago First seen · 392 lines · 85 tokens per session scan A be5fad0a5f7b

Subscribe to this mod's changes

obsidian-cli is a skill published in the GitHub repository AlteredCraft/claude-code-plugins (13 stars, last pushed 3mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 85 tokens to every session and 3,081 once invoked, about $0.0004 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 2026-08-30.

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