obsidian-cli

Obsidian CLI

Use the obsidian CLI to interact with a running Obsidian instance. Requires Obsidian to be open.

Command reference

Run obsidian help to see all available commands. This is always up to date. Full docs: https://help.obsidian.md/cli

Syntax

Parameters take a value with =. Quote values with spaces:

obsidian create name="My Note" content="Hello world"

Flags are boolean switches with no value:

obsidian create name="My Note" silent overwrite

For multiline content use \n for newline and \t for tab.

File targeting

Many commands accept file or path to target a file. Without either, the active file is used.

• file=<name> — resolves like a wikilink (name only, no path or extension needed)
• path=<path> — exact path from vault root, e.g. folder/note.md

Always prefer path= over file= — it is unambiguous and doesn't depend on vault index state.

Vault targeting

Commands target the most recently focused vault by default. Use vault=<name> as the first parameter to target a specific vault:

obsidian vault="My Vault" search query="test"

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CRITICAL: CLI content parsing bugs

The obsidian CLI argument parser has two known failure patterns that cause silent exit code 127:

1. word:anything — a colon immediately after a word with no preceding space. Triggers on YAML frontmatter (type: note), property-like content, markdown link labels.
2. [...] — square brackets anywhere in content. Triggers on YAML arrays (tags: [a, b]), markdown links, task checkboxes (- [ ] task).

Rule: Any note with YAML frontmatter, markdown links, task lists, or structured data will fail with obsidian create / obsidian append. Use the eval path instead.

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Two-path decision

Path A — Simple content only (no frontmatter, no brackets, no word: patterns)

# Create new file
obsidian create path="Folder/Note.md" content="# Title\nParagraph text" silent

# Overwrite existing file
obsidian create path="Folder/Note.md" content="# Updated\nNew content" silent overwrite

# Append to file
obsidian append path="Folder/Note.md" content="\n## New Section\nMore content"