obsidian-vault-handoff

Obsidian vault handoff

Problem

You generated markdown into a folder and sent the user an obsidian://open?vault=... or obsidian://open?path=... URL. Obsidian rejected it with "Unable to find a vault for the URL" even though the folder has a .obsidian/ directory.

Obsidian's URL handler resolves vault names and paths only against its app-level registry at ~/Library/Application Support/obsidian/obsidian.json. A .obsidian/ directory inside the folder is not enough — the folder must be registered.

When to load

• About to send the user an obsidian://open?... URI for a folder you created or moved.
• The user reports "Unable to find a vault for the URL".
• You wrote markdown intended to be opened in Obsidian (.obsidian/, wiki-links, MOC/START-HERE pages) into a path that isn't yet a known vault.

Do not load for: editing files already inside a folder that is registered in Obsidian's vault registry — those URIs already work.

Procedure

1. Read the current registry:

   cat "$HOME/Library/Application Support/obsidian/obsidian.json"
   

   Confirm whether the target absolute path appears under vaults.<id>.path. If it does, skip to step 4.

2. If Obsidian is running, quit it first — a live Obsidian process rewrites obsidian.json on exit and will clobber your edit:

   osascript -e 'tell application "Obsidian" to quit'
   

3. Add a vault entry. The key is a random 16-hex id (Obsidian's convention), not a slug. Use a real epoch-ms timestamp. Preserve the existing entries.

   python3 - <<'PY'
   import json, os, secrets, time, pathlib
   p = pathlib.Path.home() / "Library/Application Support/obsidian/obsidian.json"
   data = json.loads(p.read_text())
   vault_path = "/absolute/path/to/folder"
   if not any(v["path"] == vault_path for v in data["vaults"].values()):
       vid = secrets.token_hex(8)
       data["vaults"][vid] = {"path": vault_path, "ts": int(time.time() * 1000), "open": True}
       p.write_text(json.dumps(data))
   PY