What is obsidian-cli?

A command-line interface for working with Obsidian vaults, which are folders containing Obsidian notes. It can read, create, search, and manage notes, tasks, properties, plugins, and themes while Obsidian is open.

Use it to create or read notes, search a vault, update tasks and properties, target a specific vault or file, reload plugins, run JavaScript, inspect errors, and capture screenshots.

It lets an agent automate note and vault work without manually navigating the Obsidian application.

How vieiraae/obsidian-sidekick configures Claude Code and Codex

Reuse

Borrowing it

Nothing to install: this file belongs to vieiraae/obsidian-sidekick. Take a copy, put it at the same path in your own repository, and replace the rules that are about this project with yours.

Copy the file

curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/vieiraae/obsidian-sidekick/main/.github/skills/obsidian-cli/SKILL.md

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/vieiraae/obsidian-sidekick

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/vieiraae/obsidian-sidekick/obsidian-cli/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/vieiraae/obsidian-sidekick/obsidian-cli)

Your own site

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

Per session 102 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.

When invoked 776 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 100% copy Near-identical to another mod 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	$0.00102	$0.00776
Opus 5.5	$0.00041	$0.00310
Sonnet 5.5	$0.00020	$0.00155
Haiku 4.5	$0.00010	$0.00078

Measured 2mo ago against content hash 49e766998e0b, 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.

Origin

This is a copy

100% identical to obsidian-cli — 1 line differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.

.github/skills/obsidian-cli/SKILL.md · 106 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 106 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Obsidian CLI

Use the obsidian CLI to interact with a running Obsidian instance. Requires Obsidian to be open.

Command reference

Run obsidian help to see all available commands. This is always up to date. Full docs: https://help.obsidian.md/cli

Syntax

Parameters take a value with =. Quote values with spaces:

obsidian create name="My Note" content="Hello world"

Flags are boolean switches with no value:

obsidian create name="My Note" silent overwrite

For multiline content use \n for newline and \t for tab.

File targeting

Many commands accept file or path to target a file. Without either, the active file is used.

file=<name> — resolves like a wikilink (name only, no path or extension needed)
path=<path> — exact path from vault root, e.g. folder/note.md

Vault targeting

Commands target the most recently focused vault by default. Use vault=<name> as the first parameter to target a specific vault:

obsidian vault="My Vault" search query="test"

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="search 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"

Use --copy on any command to copy output to clipboard. Use silent to prevent files from opening. Use total on list commands to get a count.

Plugin development

Develop/test cycle

After making code changes to a plugin or theme, follow this workflow:

Reload the plugin to pick up changes:
```
obsidian plugin:reload id=my-plugin
```
Check for errors — if errors appear, fix and repeat from step 1:
```
obsidian dev:errors
```

Verify visually with a screenshot or DOM inspection:

obsidian dev:screenshot path=screenshot.png
obsidian dev:dom selector=".workspace-leaf" text

Check console output for warnings or unexpected logs:
```
obsidian dev:console level=error
```

Read the full file on GitHub · 106 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.

2mo ago First seen · 106 lines · 102 tokens per session scan A 49e766998e0b

Subscribe to this mod's changes

obsidian-cli is a skill published in the GitHub repository vieiraae/obsidian-sidekick (54 stars, last pushed 4mo ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 102 tokens to every session and 776 once invoked, about $0.0004 per session on Opus 5.5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 100% identical to obsidian-cli, differing in 1 line, and is treated as a copy.

Documents Productivity

obsidian-cli next to 6 skills from other repositories
Mod	Type	Stars	Last push	Licence	Scan	Tokens	Works with
obsidian-clivieiraae/obsidian-sidekick	Skill	54	4mo ago	Apache-2.0	A	102	Claude Code, Codex
orbit-notionnexu-io/open-design	Skill	106k	yesterday	Apache-2.0	A	117	Claude Code, Codex
gogopenclaw/openclaw	Skill	394k	yesterday	MIT	A	20	Claude Code, Codex
boxNousResearch/hermes-agent	Skill	261k	yesterday	MIT	A	14	Claude Code, Codex
feishuHmbown/CodeWhale	Skill	41k	5d ago	MIT	A	33	Claude Code, Codex
material-organizerOrkas-AI/Orkas	Skill	9.0k	yesterday	MIT	A	3	Claude Code, Codex
recipe-save-email-attachmentsgoogleworkspace/cli	Skill	32k	4d ago	Apache-2.0	A	20	Claude Code, Codex

obsidian-sidekick: Skill for Claude Code