Obsidian
About
MCP server to interact with Obsidian via the Local REST API community plugin. It allows MCP clients (like Claude Desktop) to read, search, and modify notes in an Obsidian vault.
Details
- License
- MIT
Explore
- List all files and directories in the vault root
- List files in a specific Obsidian directory
- Get the full content of any single file
- Search for documents matching a text query
- Insert content relative to a heading, block, or frontmatter field
- Append content to a new or existing file
- Delete a file or directory from the vault
Setting up with Highlight
This MCP is not yet compatible with Highlight’s one-click setup. However, you can still use it with Highlight by following these steps:
- Download and install Highlight from highlightai.com/download
- Navigate to the plugins tab and select "Add Custom Plugin"
-
Configure the plugin with the settings below
Plugin Name
ObsidianCommand (node, npx, python, etc.)Please refer to the README for specific instructions on how to obtain API keys or other required environment variables.
- Enable "Start Automatically" if you want the plugin to start when Highlight launches
From the repository
First install and enable the Obsidian Local REST API plugin, then copy the API key. Configure the server by setting OBSIDIAN_API_KEY, OBSIDIAN_HOST (default 127.0.0.1), and OBSIDIAN_PORT (default 27124) either in the MCP server config or a .env file. Run the server via uvx mcp-obsidian or using the development configuration with uv.
The server implements multiple tools to interact with Obsidian:
- list_files_in_vault: Lists all files and directories in the root directory of your Obsidian vault
- list_files_in_dir: Lists all files and directories in a specific Obsidian directory
- get_file_contents: Return the content of a single file in your vault.
- search: Search for documents matching a specified text query across all files in the vault
- patch_content: Insert content into an existing note relative to a heading, block reference, or frontmatter field.
- append_content: Append content to a new or existing file in the vault.
- delete_file: Delete a file or directory from your vault.
Claude Desktop / Cursor
Paste into your MCP client config file to install this server.
{
"mcpServers": {
"obsidian": {
"mcp-obsidian": {
"command": "uvx",
"args": [
"mcp-obsidian"
],
"env": {
"OBSIDIAN_API_KEY": "<your_api_key_here>",
"OBSIDIAN_HOST": "<your_obsidian_host>",
"OBSIDIAN_PORT": "<your_obsidian_port>"
}
}
}
}
}McpServers
{
"mcp-obsidian": {
"command": "uvx",
"args": [
"mcp-obsidian"
],
"env": {
"OBSIDIAN_API_KEY": "<your_api_key_here>",
"OBSIDIAN_HOST": "<your_obsidian_host>",
"OBSIDIAN_PORT": "<your_obsidian_port>"
}
}
}MCP server for Obsidian
MCP server to interact with Obsidian via the Local REST API community plugin.
<a href="https://glama.ai/mcp/servers/3wko1bhuek"></a>
Components
Tools
The server implements multiple tools to interact with Obsidian:
- list_files_in_vault: Lists all files and directories in the root directory of your Obsidian vault
- list_files_in_dir: Lists all files and directories in a specific Obsidian directory
- get_file_contents: Return the content of a single file in your vault.
- search: Search for documents matching a specified text query across all files in the vault
- patch_content: Insert content into an existing note relative to a heading, block reference, or frontmatter field.
- append_content: Append content to a new or existing file in the vault.
- delete_file: Delete a file or directory from your vault.
Example prompts
Its good to first instruct Claude to use Obsidian. Then it will always call the tool.
The use prompts like this:
- Get the contents of the last architecture call note and summarize them
- Search for all files where Azure CosmosDb is mentioned and quickly explain to me the context in which it is mentioned
- Summarize the last meeting notes and put them into a new note 'summary meeting.md'. Add an introduction so that I can send it via email.
Configuration
Obsidian REST API Key
There are two ways to configure the environment with the Obsidian REST API Key.
1. Add to server config (preferred)
{
"mcp-obsidian": {
"command": "uvx",
"args": [
"mcp-obsidian"
],
"env": {
"OBSIDIAN_API_KEY": "<your_api_key_here>",
"OBSIDIAN_HOST": "<your_obsidian_host>",
"OBSIDIAN_PORT": "<your_obsidian_port>"
}
}
}
which uvx to find and paste the full path in above config in such cases.
2. Create a .env file in the working directory with the following required variables:
OBSIDIAN_API_KEY=your_api_key_here
OBSIDIAN_HOST=your_obsidian_host
OBSIDIAN_PORT=your_obsidian_port
Note:
- You can find the API key in the Obsidian plugin config
- Default port is 27124 if not specified
- Default host is 127.0.0.1 if not specified
Quickstart
Install
Obsidian REST API
You need the Obsidian REST API community plugin running: https://github.com/coddingtonbear/obsidian-local-rest-api
Install and enable it in the settings and copy the api key.
Claude Desktop
On MacOS: ~/Library/Application\ Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
On Windows: %APPDATA%/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
<details>
<summary>Development/Unpublished Servers Configuration</summary>
{
"mcpServers": {
"mcp-obsidian": {
"command": "uv",
"args": [
"--directory",
"<dir_to>/mcp-obsidian",
"run",
"mcp-obsidian"
],
"env": {
"OBSIDIAN_API_KEY": "<your_api_key_here>",
"OBSIDIAN_HOST": "<your_obsidian_host>",
"OBSIDIAN_PORT": "<your_obsidian_port>"
}
}
}
}
</details>
<details>
<summary>Published Servers Configuration</summary>
{
"mcpServers": {
"mcp-obsidian": {
"command": "uvx",
"args": [
"mcp-obsidian"
],
"env": {
"OBSIDIAN_API_KEY": "<YOUR_OBSIDIAN_API_KEY>",
"OBSIDIAN_HOST": "<your_obsidian_host>",
"OBSIDIAN_PORT": "<your_obsidian_port>"
}
}
}
}
</details>
Development
Building
To prepare the package for distribution:
1. Sync dependencies and update lockfile:
uv sync
Debugging
Since MCP servers run over stdio, debugging can be challenging. For the best debugging
experience, we strongly recommend using the MCP Inspector.
You can launch the MCP Inspector via npm with this command:
npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector uv --directory /path/to/mcp-obsidian run mcp-obsidian
Upon launching, the Inspector will display a URL that you can access in your browser to begin debugging.
You can also watch the server logs with this command:
tail -n 20 -f ~/Library/Logs/Claude/mcp-server-mcp-obsidian.log
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