obsidian-vault-discovery

Obsidian Vault Discovery

This skill discovers configuration from an Obsidian vault. It uses the obsidian-cli (bundled with Obsidian 1.12+) as the primary method, falling back to direct file reads when Obsidian is not running.

When to Use

Invoke this skill (internally) when you need to determine:

• Vault location and root path
• Daily notes folder and date format
• Templates folder location
• Meeting notes folder (from CLAUDE.md conventions)
• People directory (from CLAUDE.md conventions)

Discovery Steps

1. Check CLI Availability

obsidian vault info=name

If this command succeeds, Obsidian is running and CLI-based discovery (steps 2–4) will work. If it fails (command not found or Obsidian not running), skip to the Fallback: File-Based Discovery section below.

The obsidian-cli binary is at /Applications/Obsidian.app/Contents/MacOS/obsidian-cli. Ensure /Applications/Obsidian.app/Contents/MacOS is on the PATH, or use the full path.

2. Get Vault Root

obsidian vault info=path

Returns the absolute vault path, e.g.:

/Users/jlaska/Library/Mobile Documents/iCloud~md~obsidian/Documents/Obsidian Vault

3. Read Plugin Configuration via eval

Fetch live plugin settings from the running Obsidian instance:

Daily Notes (core plugin):

obsidian eval "code=JSON.stringify(app.internalPlugins.getPluginById('daily-notes').instance.options)"

Returns:

{"template":"TEMPLATES/Daily Note Template","folder":"DAILY_NOTES","format":"YYYY/MM-MMMM/YYYY-MM-DD dddd"}

Templates (core plugin):

obsidian eval "code=JSON.stringify(app.internalPlugins.getPluginById('templates').instance.options)"

Returns:

{"folder":"TEMPLATES"}

Templater (community plugin — skip if not installed):

obsidian eval "code=JSON.stringify(app.plugins.getPlugin('templater-obsidian')?.settings)"

Returns settings including templates_folder, user_scripts_folder, and folder_templates.