What is obsidian-vault-ops?

A command-line workflow for managing an Obsidian vault, which is a folder of linked Markdown notes opened in the Obsidian app. It covers notes, tasks, properties, searches, daily notes, and Obsidian plugin development.

Use it to read, create, update, search, and organize notes, tasks, tags, backlinks, and properties, or to develop Obsidian plugins and themes.

It lets an agent work with vault content from the shell instead of manually opening and editing each note. The Obsidian app must be running for the commands to work.

obsidian-vault-ops — Skill for Claude Code and Codex by jxoesneon

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 jxoesneon/Ciel --skill obsidian-vault-ops

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/jxoesneon/Ciel

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

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/jxoesneon/ciel/obsidian-vault-ops/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/jxoesneon/ciel/obsidian-vault-ops)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/jxoesneon/ciel/obsidian-vault-ops"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/jxoesneon/ciel/obsidian-vault-ops/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/jxoesneon/ciel/obsidian-vault-ops"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/jxoesneon/ciel/obsidian-vault-ops.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>

Per session 48 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.

When invoked 889 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	$0.00048	$0.00889
Opus 5	$0.00024	$0.00445
Sonnet 5	$0.00010	$0.00178
Haiku 4.5	$0.00005	$0.00089

Measured 8d ago against content hash 6b0ff9e419d3, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

obsidian-vault-ops 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/obsidian-vault-ops/SKILL.md · 67 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 67 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

CIEL ADAPTATION: Obsidian Vault Operations

Drive a running Obsidian instance from the shell via the obsidian CLI. Covers note CRUD, search, daily notes, tasks/tags/backlinks, properties, and plugin/theme development cycles. Requires Obsidian to be open; run obsidian help for the authoritative command list.

Syntax

Parameters take a value with =; quote values with spaces: obsidian create name="My Note" content="Hello"
Flags are boolean switches with no value: obsidian create name="X" silent overwrite
Multiline content uses \n (newline) and \t (tab)
--copy on any command copies output to clipboard; silent suppresses file opening; total on list commands returns a count

File & Vault Targeting

file=<name> — resolves like a wikilink (name only, no path/extension)
path=<path> — exact path from vault root, e.g. folder/note.md
No target → uses the active file
vault=<name> as first parameter targets a specific vault (default: most recently focused)

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="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"

Plugin Development Cycle

Reload after code changes: obsidian plugin:reload id=my-plugin
Check errors (fix and repeat from step 1 if any): obsidian dev:errors
Verify visually: obsidian dev:screenshot path=screenshot.png / obsidian dev:dom selector=".workspace-leaf" text
Console output: obsidian dev:console level=error

Additional Dev Commands

Run JS in app context: obsidian eval code="app.vault.getFiles().length"
Inspect CSS: obsidian dev:css selector=".workspace-leaf" prop=background-color
Toggle mobile emulation: obsidian dev:mobile on
CDP/debugger controls available via obsidian help

Read the full file on GitHub · 67 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.

8d ago First seen · 67 lines · 48 tokens per session scan A 6b0ff9e419d3

Subscribe to this mod's changes

obsidian-vault-ops is a skill published in the GitHub repository jxoesneon/Ciel (1 stars, last pushed 5d ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 48 tokens to every session and 889 once invoked, about $0.0002 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 2026-09-03.

Autonomous Agents Claude Code Productivity agentic-workflows ai ciel domain-knowledge gemini-cli harmonized multi-agent-systems

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obsidian-vault-ops