vault-query

vault-query is a skill for Claude Code from Howie126313/obsidian-vault-kit. It costs 57 tokens per session (982 once invoked), scanned A, original, Apache-2.0.

A system for searching and combining information from a personal Markdown notes collection, called a vault. It checks an index, finds relevant articles, reads them, and can save useful answers as new notes.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to find a note about a topic, answer questions from stored articles, or compile information across a knowledge base.
Why use it?
It reduces the need to open notes one by one and helps produce an answer from several related sources. It can also preserve high-value conclusions for later use.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: allowed-tools in frontmatter. Also seen: names the AskUserQuestion tool.

Part of the obsidian-vault-kit plugin — 6 skills shipped together

Good fit Use it to find a note about a topic, answer questions from stored articles, or compile information across a knowledge base.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/howie126313/obsidian-vault-kit/vault-query
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.

Any agent
npx skills add Howie126313/obsidian-vault-kit --skill vault-query
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Howie126313/obsidian-vault-kit

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install obsidian-vault-kit, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 6 skills.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for vault-query

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/howie126313/obsidian-vault-kit/vault-query.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/howie126313/obsidian-vault-kit/vault-query)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/howie126313/obsidian-vault-kit/vault-query"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/howie126313/obsidian-vault-kit/vault-query.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 57 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 982 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
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 5.1 $0.00057 $0.00982
Opus 5 $0.00028 $0.00491
Sonnet 5 $0.00011 $0.00196
Haiku 4.5 $0.00006 $0.00098

Measured 8d ago against content hash 999ea1acfc34, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-08, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

vault-query 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 8d 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.

skills/vault-query/SKILL.md · 115 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 115 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Vault Query — Karpathy-Style Knowledge Synthesis

Based on the "compile, don't retrieve" philosophy: look up the index first, read full text to synthesize, write back high-value answers.

Workflow

Step 1: Environment Detection & Query Parsing

1a. Detect vault root — follow ../../_shared/common-steps.md "Vault Detection" section.

1b. Parse user query intent:

Extract from user input:

  • query: core question or keywords
  • scope: whether a directory scope was specified (e.g., user mentions a topic that maps to a configured directory)
  • depth: simple lookup ("which article covers X") vs deep synthesis ("compile everything about X")

Step 2: Index Lookup

2a. Read index.md:

Read("$VAULT_ROOT/index.md")

Scan all entries in index.md — titles, summaries, and tags — to find candidate articles related to the query (typically 3-8).

2b. Supplementary search:

index.md may miss content. Use Grep to supplement:

Grep("{keyword}", path="$VAULT_ROOT", glob="**/*.md")

Exclude results from .claude/, .git/, reviews/, index.md.

2c. Determine reading list:

Merge index lookup and Grep results, sort by relevance, finalize the list of articles to read in full.

Step 3: Deep Read & Synthesis

3a. Read relevant articles in full:

For each article on the reading list, use Read to get full text. Read in parallel for efficiency.

3b. Synthesize the answer:

Choose synthesis mode based on depth:

  • Simple lookup: list relevant articles and their key points, point the user to read directly
  • Deep synthesis:
    1. Extract key information from multiple articles
    2. Integrate into a complete knowledge picture, citing sources (see [[article-name]])
    3. Surface connections, contradictions, or complementary relationships between articles
    4. Identify knowledge gaps ("no article covers aspect Y of topic X")

Step 4: Write-Back Decision

After synthesizing, evaluate whether writing back is warranted:

Read the full file on GitHub · 115 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. 8d ago First seen · 115 lines · 57 tokens per session scan A 999ea1acfc34

Subscribe to this mod's changes

vault-query is a skill published in the GitHub repository Howie126313/obsidian-vault-kit (3 stars, last pushed 4mo ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 57 tokens to every session and 982 once invoked, about $0.0003 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.

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