What is obsidian-cli?

A skill for controlling a running Obsidian app from the command line, including files, plugins, themes, commands, screenshots, and JavaScript evaluation.

Use it to open or edit notes, search the vault, manage plugins or themes, run command-palette actions, and inspect the Obsidian window.

It lets an agent use Obsidian's search index, links, tags, and interface instead of working only with files on disk.

obsidian-cli — Skill for Claude Code by jlaska/obsidian-claude-plugins

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 jlaska/obsidian-claude-plugins --skill obsidian-cli

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/jlaska/obsidian-claude-plugins

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install obsidian-productivity, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 10 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.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/jlaska/obsidian-claude-plugins/obsidian-cli/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/jlaska/obsidian-claude-plugins/obsidian-cli)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/jlaska/obsidian-claude-plugins/obsidian-cli"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/jlaska/obsidian-claude-plugins/obsidian-cli/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

Your own site · 80×15

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/jlaska/obsidian-claude-plugins/obsidian-cli"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/jlaska/obsidian-claude-plugins/obsidian-cli.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>

Per session 125 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.

When invoked 2,220 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.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.00125	$0.02220
Opus 5.5	$0.00050	$0.00888
Sonnet 5.5	$0.00025	$0.00444
Haiku 4.5	$0.00013	$0.00222

Measured 2mo ago against content hash 1bc848a918d4, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, 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 2mo 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/obsidian-cli/SKILL.md · 342 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 342 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Obsidian CLI Skill

The obsidian CLI (available in Obsidian 1.12+) lets you control the running Obsidian app from the terminal. It has awareness of the vault's search index, link graph, tags, and UI state — things that direct file access cannot provide.

Full command reference: skills/obsidian-cli/references/commands-full.md

Prerequisites

Obsidian 1.12+ must be installed and running
CLI must be registered: In Obsidian → Settings → General → scroll to "CLI" → enable it
PATH must include the CLI binary: Add to ~/.zprofile:
```
export PATH="$PATH:/Applications/Obsidian.app/Contents/MacOS"
```
Then reload: source ~/.zprofile

Verify setup

obsidian version

If this fails, walk through the prerequisites above. If the app is installed but CLI isn't on PATH:

/Applications/Obsidian.app/Contents/MacOS/obsidian version

Core Syntax

obsidian <command> [param=value] [--flag]

Named parameters: obsidian read file="path/to/note.md"
Vault targeting: defaults to the vault matching the current directory; use vault=VaultName to override
Copy to clipboard: append --copy to any command
Multiline content: use \n for newlines, \t for tabs in content= params
Output formats: many commands support format=json, format=md, format=csv

File path conventions

Paths are relative to the vault root:

obsidian read file="Meetings/2026/03-March/02-Monday/2026-03-02-Team Sync.md"

When to Use CLI vs Direct File Access

Prefer CLI

Task	CLI Command
Search with index/property awareness	`obsidian search query=X`
Find backlinks to a note	`obsidian backlinks file=X`
Find orphan or dead-end notes	`obsidian orphans`, `obsidian deadends`
Open a file in Obsidian's UI	`obsidian open file=X`
Aggregate tasks across vault	`obsidian tasks todo`
List/filter tags	`obsidian tags counts`
Run a command palette command	`obsidian command id=X`
Enable/disable a plugin	`obsidian plugin:enable id=X`
View file version history	`obsidian history file=X`
Diff against a previous version	`obsidian diff file=X`
Resolve template variables	`obsidian template:read file=X resolve=true`
Query a Base	`obsidian base:query file=X`
Take a UI screenshot	`obsidian dev:screenshot`
Evaluate JS in Obsidian context	`obsidian eval code=X`

Read the full file on GitHub · 342 lines

Files

What ships with it

1 file beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

references/commands-full.md 22 KB

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.

2mo ago First seen · 342 lines · 125 tokens per session scan A 1bc848a918d4

Subscribe to this mod's changes

obsidian-cli is a skill published in the GitHub repository jlaska/obsidian-claude-plugins (2 stars, last pushed 4d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 125 tokens to every session and 2,220 once invoked, about $0.0005 per session on Opus 5.5. 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.

Productivity

obsidian-cli next to 6 skills from other repositories
Mod	Type	Stars	Last push	Licence	Scan	Tokens	Works with
obsidian-clijlaska/obsidian-claude-plugins	Skill	2	4d ago	MIT	A	125	Claude Code
orbit-notionnexu-io/open-design	Skill	108k	today	Apache-2.0	A	117	Claude Code, Codex
agentmailpaperclipai/paperclip	Skill	114k	today	MIT	A	30	Claude Code, Codex
rowboat-spacesrowboatlabs/rowboat	Skill	18k	yesterday	Apache-2.0	A	60	Claude Code, Codex
Cortexdanielmiessler/LifeOS	Skill	20k	9d ago	MIT	A	184	Claude Code
pinchtab-mcppinchtab/pinchtab	Skill	11k	4d ago	MIT	A	52	Claude Code, Codex
feishuHmbown/CodeWhale	Skill	41k	6d ago	MIT	A	33	Claude Code, Codex