Watch the Remote Vault Bridge in 44 seconds

Remote setup guide

Remote request → semantic search → graph context → guarded edit → mount-loss recovery.

Obsidian Everywhere is built around two ideas:

1. Notes are a graph and a semantic knowledge base, not a folder of text files. Backlinks, n-hop neighborhoods, shortest paths, PageRank, full-text search, and local multilingual embeddings turn a topic into focused, token-budgeted context.
2. Your vault should be usable where your agents run. The Remote Vault Bridge exposes that same graph and its guarded write tools over authenticated Streamable HTTP. A Claude Code or Codex process on another server can search, reason over, append to, and reorganize a vault that remains on your own machine.

The local path stays the source of truth. There is no hosted copy, telemetry service, or mandatory cloud account. Remote access is a transport you operate, not a vault-sync product.

Contents

• Watch the Remote Vault Bridge in 44 seconds
• Features
• Two core capabilities
• Try it without your vault
• Why Obsidian Everywhere?
• Where does this actually run?
• Quickstart
• Configuration
• Development
• Project status
• Contributing
• License

Features

vault (.md files)
  │  parse · watch
  ▼
SQLite index (FTS5)  ⇄  in-memory graph (graphology)
  │                       n-hop · shortest path · PageRank
  ▼
39 MCP tools
  │
  ▼
local stdio  ·  authenticated remote HTTP  ·  OAuth HTTP

• 🧩 Graph + semantic context engine — a markdown parser (wikilinks, embeds, frontmatter, nested tags, headings, block references), a SQLite index with full-text search, and an in-memory graphology layer for n-hop traversal, shortest paths, and PageRank. get_context_bundle packs a topic and its most useful neighbors into a requested token budget.
• 🌍 Remote Vault Bridge — agents on an external server get the same search, graph, context, and guarded editing tools over authenticated Streamable HTTP. Use a private network or an HTTPS tunnel such as ngrok; the vault itself stays on the machine you control.
• 🧠 Local semantic search — semantic_search and get_related with method: "semantic" run a small multilingual embedding model (multilingual-e5-small) entirely on your machine — no API key, cloud account, or Ollama process to run. Downloads once (~120MB, cached under ~/.obsidian-everywhere/), then works fully offline.
• 🛡️ Safe writes and resilient mounts — partial edits, dry-run-first bulk operations, rollback snapshots, recoverable deletion, and an opt-in Beta mount guard. If a removable drive, NAS share, or container mount disappears, the index is preserved, writes are blocked, and a full reconciliation runs after it returns.
• 🛠️ 39 graph-native MCP tools — structured reads, graph navigation, semantic retrieval, safe lifecycle operations, persisted Obsidian settings, and explicit vault_status health reporting.

Two core capabilities

1. Turn a linked vault into focused AI context

Exact search finds the words you wrote. Semantic search finds the idea even when the wording or language differs. Graph traversal then explains how the matching notes relate. get_context_bundle combines those signals into a bounded context package instead of dumping an entire vault into the model.

2. Use and edit that context from an external server

Run Obsidian Everywhere beside the local vault, expose its HTTP endpoint through your private network or an HTTPS tunnel, and register the URL in the remote MCP client. The remote agent can read and search the local vault, then use the same guarded tools to create, append, move, tag, or clean up notes. The server reindexes each successful write before returning, so the next remote tool call sees the change.

For the complete ngrok path, see the Remote Vault Bridge with ngrok tutorial.

Try it without your vault

Run the built-in demo first. It creates a temporary sample vault, shows graph orientation and unresolved-link discovery, previews a safe bulk edit, and then removes the sample. It never reads or changes your own notes.

npx -y obsidian-everywhere demo

When you are ready to connect a real vault, generate copyable configuration for Codex, ChatGPT Desktop, Claude Code, and Claude Desktop:

npx -y obsidian-everywhere init /absolute/path/to/your/vault
npx -y obsidian-everywhere doctor /absolute/path/to/your/vault

init only prints configuration—it never edits global client settings. doctor checks Node.js, permissions, Obsidian metadata, SQLite, parsing, and the graph engine without printing note content. Add --share to redact the vault path before pasting diagnostics into an issue.

Why Obsidian Everywhere?

There are several good Obsidian MCPs. Pick the architecture that matches how you work rather than assuming one server wins every category.

Comparison checked against each project's published documentation on 2026-07-20. A blank or narrower cell means “not documented there,” not that a project can never support it. If you need active-file state or command-palette execution, choose a plugin-backed server. If you want a headless, one-command graph server with token-budgeted context and guarded cleanup, that is the niche Obsidian Everywhere is designed for.

Everything runs locally by default. There is no account, API key, hosted vault, or telemetry requirement.

See docs/architecture.md for how it's built, docs/deploy.md for the deployment topology, and docs/ngrok-remote.md for an end-to-end external server tutorial.

Where does this actually run?

The obsidian-everywhere process needs direct filesystem access to your vault's .md files (to parse them, watch for changes, etc.) — so it must always run on the machine where your vault physically lives ("the vault machine": your laptop, most likely). It does not matter which client machine you're working from — the server always runs on the vault machine; only the client connection method changes.

You can run more than one of these at once (e.g. stdio on your laptop and bearer-token HTTP for your work server) — they're independent processes that all index the same vault.

Quickstart

The fastest install needs no clone or build step. Run this on the vault machine (wherever your .md files live):

npx -y obsidian-everywhere /absolute/path/to/your/vault

MCP clients normally launch this command for you using one of the configurations below.

Not sure whether the path and runtime are ready? Run the privacy-safe diagnostic:

npx -y obsidian-everywhere doctor /absolute/path/to/your/vault

Option A — Codex CLI and ChatGPT Desktop, same machine as the vault (stdio)

Codex CLI, the Codex IDE extension, and ChatGPT Desktop's Codex experience share the same MCP configuration (official MCP documentation). Add the server once:

codex mcp add obsidian-everywhere -- npx -y obsidian-everywhere /absolute/path/to/your/vault
codex mcp list

Then restart ChatGPT Desktop (or the IDE extension). In ChatGPT Desktop you can also add it through Settings → MCP servers → Add server, choose STDIO, and enter the same command and arguments. Type /mcp in Codex to confirm that the server and its 39 tools are connected.

For a project-scoped configuration instead, add this to a trusted project's .codex/config.toml; use ~/.codex/config.toml to make it available globally:

[mcp_servers.obsidian-everywhere]
command = "npx"
args = ["-y", "obsidian-everywhere", "/absolute/path/to/your/vault"]
startup_timeout_sec = 30

Use an absolute vault path. GUI apps may not inherit the same PATH as your terminal; if npx is not found, replace command with the absolute result of command -v npx.

Option A′ — Claude Code, same machine as the vault (stdio)

Still on the vault machine:

claude mcp add obsidian-everywhere -- npx -y obsidian-everywhere /path/to/your/vault

Or with environment variables instead of a positional arg:

OBSIDIAN_VAULT_PATH=/path/to/your/vault claude mcp add obsidian-everywhere -- npx -y obsidian-everywhere

Option A″ — Claude Desktop, same machine as the vault

Add to claude_desktop_config.json on the vault machine:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "obsidian-everywhere": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "obsidian-everywhere", "/absolute/path/to/your/vault"]
    }
  }
}

Option A‴ — Google Antigravity CLI (agy)

Add to your global Antigravity MCP configuration file (~/.gemini/config/mcp_config.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "obsidian-everywhere": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "obsidian-everywhere", "/absolute/path/to/your/vault"]
    }
  }
}

Option B — Codex, ChatGPT Desktop, or Claude on a different machine

Choose one secure route to the vault machine:

• Private network: use Tailscale and follow the steps below.
• Public HTTPS tunnel: use the read-only-first ngrok Remote Vault Bridge tutorial. Never expose the local plaintext HTTP port directly.

Step 1 — set up a private network between the two machines, if you chose Tailscale:

# on BOTH the vault machine and the MCP client machine
curl -fsSL https://tailscale.com/install.sh | sh   # or: brew install tailscale (macOS)
tailscale up                                        # opens a browser to log in / join your "tailnet"
tailscale status                                    # confirm both machines can see each other

Note the vault machine's Tailscale hostname/IP from tailscale status (something like my-macbook.tailnet-name.ts.net or 100.x.y.z).

Step 2 — start the server, on the vault machine:

OBSIDIAN_VAULT_PATH=/path/to/vault OBSIDIAN_EVERYWHERE_TOKEN=$(openssl rand -hex 32) \
  npx -y --package obsidian-everywhere obsidian-everywhere-http

Keep this token — you'll need it in step 3. (To keep this running persistently instead of in a foreground terminal, see the LaunchAgent setup in docs/deploy.md, or run it in Docker via docker-compose.yml if the vault machine is a server.)

Step 3 — connect from the other machine (the lab server, etc.), using the vault machine's Tailscale address from step 1. For Codex (and the shared ChatGPT Desktop configuration), keep the token in an environment variable:

export OBSIDIAN_EVERYWHERE_CLIENT_TOKEN="<the token from step 2>"
codex mcp add obsidian-everywhere \
  --url http://<vault-machine-tailscale-name>:3737/mcp \
  --bearer-token-env-var OBSIDIAN_EVERYWHERE_CLIENT_TOKEN

Ensure ChatGPT Desktop is launched with that environment variable available, then restart it. Alternatively, use Settings → MCP servers to add the Streamable HTTP URL and bearer credential if your app version exposes those fields.

For Claude Code:

claude mcp add --transport http obsidian-everywhere \
  http://<vault-machine-tailscale-name>:3737/mcp \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer <the token from step 2>"

The second machine now has access to the vault indexed on the first. Full walkthrough (Docker, LaunchAgent): docs/deploy.md.

Option C — claude.ai web/mobile app (custom connector, OAuth)

This needs a public HTTPS endpoint — claude.ai's servers can't reach your Tailscale network or localhost. See docs/deploy.md for the full Cloudflare Tunnel walkthrough (including the no-domain-needed Quick Tunnel option for testing). Once your server is reachable at https://your-domain:

1. claude.ai → Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector
2. Server URL: https://your-domain/mcp
3. claude.ai auto-discovers the OAuth flow and shows this server's sign-in page — enter the OAUTH_LOGIN_SECRET you configured.

You only need this if you actually want claude.ai's web/mobile apps to read your vault. If you only ever use Claude Code (locally or from another machine), skip this entirely — Option A/B already fully covers that with no Cloudflare/OAuth involved.

Configuration

Development

npm run dev:stdio          # tsx, no build step
npm run dev:http
npm run dev:oauth-http
npm test                   # vitest, runs against fixtures/test-vault
npm run typecheck
npm run lint
npm run format:check

fixtures/test-vault/ is a 30+ note fixture vault exercising every link and parsing edge case the parser needs to handle (piped aliases, heading and block links, embeds, frontmatter-embedded wikilinks, nested tags, duplicate filenames across folders, unresolved links, code-block exclusion, and Korean filenames/tags/wikilinks). It's what every test in src/**/*.test.ts runs against.

Project status

Current v0.7.0 includes the graph and local semantic context engine, all three transports (stdio, bearer HTTP, OAuth HTTP), 39 MCP tools, guarded partial and bulk writes, and client setup for Codex, ChatGPT Desktop, and Claude. Remote Vault Bridge is a first-class deployment path. Its opt-in mount guard remains Beta while it receives cross-platform feedback for removable drives, NAS shares, and container mounts.

Help test a real remote-vault setup in Beta Issue #18, or ask questions in Discussion #19. A disposable vault is welcome; never share note contents, tokens, or private hostnames.

Contributing

Bug reports, feature requests, and PRs are welcome — see CONTRIBUTING.md for dev setup, testing conventions, and how the fixture vault relates to the test suite. Security issues: please see SECURITY.md rather than opening a public issue.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.