obsidian-cli

A command-line interface for working with an open Obsidian vault, where a vault is Obsidian's folder of notes and related files. It can read, create, search, and manage notes, tasks, and note properties, and can also support Obsidian plugin and theme development.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to create or update notes and tasks, search a vault, manage note properties, reload plugins, run JavaScript, capture errors, take screenshots, and inspect the page structure.
Why use it?
It lets an agent work with Obsidian content through commands instead of requiring manual note editing, while also exposing errors, screenshots, and page structure during development.

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/highbaud/synaptic/obsidian-cli
Any agent
npx skills add highbaud/synaptic --skill obsidian-cli
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/highbaud/synaptic

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 102 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 776 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin 100% copy Near-identical to another mod 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 $0.00102 $0.00776
Opus 5 $0.00051 $0.00388
Sonnet 5 $0.00020 $0.00155
Haiku 4.5 $0.00010 $0.00078

Measured yesterday against content hash b54257cdc0e5, 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 yesterday.

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.

Origin

This is a copy

100% identical to obsidian-cli — 0 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.

skills/obsidian-cli/SKILL.md · 107 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 107 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

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

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"

Common patterns

obsidian read file="My Note"
obsidian create name="New Note" content="# Hello" template="Template" silent
obsidian append file="My Note" content="New line"
obsidian search query="search term" limit=10
obsidian daily:read
obsidian daily:append content="- [ ] New task"
obsidian property:set name="status" value="done" file="My Note"
obsidian tasks daily todo
obsidian tags sort=count counts
obsidian backlinks file="My Note"

Use --copy on any command to copy output to clipboard. Use silent to prevent files from opening. Use total on list commands to get a count.

Plugin development

Develop/test cycle

After making code changes to a plugin or theme, follow this workflow:

  1. Reload the plugin to pick up changes:
    obsidian plugin:reload id=my-plugin
    
  2. Check for errors — if errors appear, fix and repeat from step 1:
    obsidian dev:errors
    
  3. Verify visually with a screenshot or DOM inspection:
    obsidian dev:screenshot path=screenshot.png
    obsidian dev:dom selector=".workspace-leaf" text
    
  4. Check console output for warnings or unexpected logs:
    obsidian dev:console level=error
    

Read the full file on GitHub · 107 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. yesterday First seen · 107 lines · 102 tokens per session scan A b54257cdc0e5

Subscribe to this mod's changes

obsidian-cli is a skill published in the GitHub repository highbaud/synaptic (5 stars, last pushed 22d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 102 tokens to every session and 776 once invoked, about $0.0005 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 100% identical to obsidian-cli, differing in 0 lines, and is treated as a copy.

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