obsidian-cli

obsidian-cli is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from jlaska/obsidian-claude-plugins. It costs 125 tokens per session (2,220 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

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

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to open or edit notes, search the vault, manage plugins or themes, run command-palette actions, and inspect the Obsidian window.
Why use it?
It lets an agent use Obsidian's search index, links, tags, and interface instead of working only with files on disk.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Part of the obsidian-productivity plugin — 10 skills shipped together

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/jlaska/obsidian-claude-plugins/obsidian-cli
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, Codex.

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.

agentmods badge for obsidian-cli

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/jlaska/obsidian-claude-plugins/obsidian-cli.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.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" 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. Scan, not verified.
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 $0.00125 $0.02220
Opus 5 $0.00063 $0.01110
Sonnet 5 $0.00025 $0.00444
Haiku 4.5 $0.00013 $0.00222

Measured 4d ago against content hash 1bc848a918d4, 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 4d 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

  1. Obsidian 1.12+ must be installed and running
  2. CLI must be registered: In Obsidian → Settings → General → scroll to "CLI" → enable it
  3. 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.

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. 4d 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 3d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 125 tokens to every session and 2,220 once invoked, about $0.0006 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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