obsidian-mcp-pro

The most feature-complete MCP server for Obsidian vaults.

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Give AI assistants deep, structured access to your Obsidian knowledge base. Read, write, search, tag, analyze links, traverse graphs, manipulate canvases, query Bases, edit by heading or block reference, run semantic search, and pull binary attachments. All through the Model Context Protocol.

41 tools, 5 prompts, 3 resources. Every tool ships with rich descriptions, typed schemas, human-readable titles, and safety annotations (readOnlyHint, destructiveHint, idempotentHint) so your agent picks the right tool, passes the right arguments, and handles results correctly. The original 23 tools earned an average 4.40/5 score and all-A grades on Glama's quality index; the 18 newer ones follow the same authoring conventions documented in docs/TOOL_AUTHORING.md.

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Contents

• Features
• Quick Start
• Usage
• Configuration
• Security
• Wikilink Resolution
• Tool Reference
• MCP Resources
• Troubleshooting
• Development
• Testing
• What's New
• Contributing
• License

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Features

Read & Search

• Focus-ranked full-text search across all vault notes, with query-centered snippets (cached: re-runs only re-read changed files)
• Read individual notes whole, or as a fragment by heading path, block id, or line range
• List and filter notes by folder, date, or pattern
• Search by frontmatter fields and values
• Retrieve daily notes automatically using the vault's configured filename format
• get_recent_notes orders by mtime; get_vault_stats reports counts, words, tag coverage; resolve_alias translates a display name to a real note path

Write & Modify

• Create new notes with frontmatter and content
• Append or prepend content to existing notes
• Update frontmatter properties programmatically (merge: unlisted keys are preserved)
• Move and rename notes (rewrites every wikilink, markdown link, and canvas reference across the vault by default)
• Delete notes safely; moved to the vault's .trash folder by default, with an optional permanent flag and elicitation-based confirmation
• Surgical edits by heading: update_section, insert_at_section, list_sections, plus single-note replace_in_note (regex with match-count guard) and edit_block for paragraphs tagged with ^id

Tags

• Build and query a complete tag index (incremental: cached across runs)
• Search notes by single or multiple tags
• rename_tag rewrites both inline #tag occurrences and frontmatter tags: arrays vault-wide; hierarchical mode also rebases nested sub-tags (project/alpha follows project)

Links & Graph

• Get backlinks (what links to a note)
• Get outlinks (what a note links to)
• Find orphan notes with no inbound or outbound links
• Detect broken links pointing to non-existent notes
• Traverse graph neighbors to a configurable depth

Canvas

• Read .canvas files with full node and edge data
• Add new nodes (text, file, link, group) to canvases
• Add edges between canvas nodes
• List all canvases in the vault

Bases (Obsidian 1.10+)

• list_bases enumerates .base files
• read_base returns the parsed YAML (filters, properties, views)
• query_base runs the filter DSL against the vault and returns matching notes; supports taggedWith(), file.hasTag(), file.inFolder(), comparison operators, and and/or/not combinators. Unsupported filters warn and fail closed instead of broadening results.

Attachments

• list_attachments enumerates every non-md/canvas/base file with a per-extension count summary
• find_unused_attachments flags assets no note references via embeds or markdown links; optional reclaimable-bytes report
• get_attachment returns image / audio / blob bytes inline as MCP content blocks (5 MB default cap, 50 MB hard cap)

Semantic Search (optional, Ollama or OpenAI)

• index_vault chunks each note (heading-aware), embeds via the configured provider, persists vectors to <vault>/.obsidian/cache/, and incrementally re-embeds only changed notes
• Because indexing sends readable note chunks to the configured embedding provider, index_vault requires confirm: "send-vault-text-to-embedding-provider" on each call
• search_semantic ranks notes by cosine similarity against an embedded query
• find_similar_notes reuses an existing note's embeddings, with source-topic anchoring, to surface neighbors without a live API call
• Stored snippets are returned only while the current note content hash still matches the indexed text; stale chunks are pruned on search

MCP Resources

• obsidian://note/{path} reads any note by its vault-relative path
• obsidian://tags retrieves the full tag index as JSON
• obsidian://daily gets today's daily note content

MCP Prompts

The server exposes five starter prompts that clients (Claude Desktop, Cursor) surface in their slash-command palette:

• daily-review walks today's daily note, surfaces unchecked tasks, and proposes follow-ups
• weekly-rollup aggregates the last seven daily notes into themes / decisions / open tasks
• find-stale-notes locates untouched notes and clusters them as orphaned vs. broken-linked vs. still-linked
• extract-action-items pulls all - [ ] … lines from a note (or every note matching a tag) into a checklist
• build-moc generates a Map of Content (MOC) for a tag or folder

Operational features

• Folder-scoped permissions: OBSIDIAN_READ_PATHS / OBSIDIAN_WRITE_PATHS allowlists gate every tool at the path-resolution choke point
• In-memory mtime cache speeds repeated vault scans within a running process without persisting note bodies to disk
• Progress notifications (notifications/progress) on rename_tag, find_unused_attachments, and index_vault when the client subscribes via _meta.progressToken
• Hard bulk-write latches require confirmPath for default move_note reference rewrites, confirmTag for non-dry-run rename_tag, and confirm=true for permanent deletion; clients with elicitation support also get typed prompts

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Quick Start

Using Obsidian? There's also an Obsidian plugin that runs this server inside the app with a ribbon toggle and settings UI — no config-file editing. Recommended for most users.

One-Command Install (Claude Desktop / Cursor)

npx -y obsidian-mcp-pro install

This merges an entry into your claude_desktop_config.json (or ~/.cursor/mcp.json with --client=cursor), backs up the previous file, and prints next steps. Works on macOS, Windows, and Linux.

Pin a specific vault:

npx -y obsidian-mcp-pro install --vault /path/to/your/vault

Manual Claude Desktop Config

Add this to your Claude Desktop configuration file (claude_desktop_config.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "obsidian": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "obsidian-mcp-pro"]
    }
  }
}

If you have multiple vaults, specify which one:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "obsidian": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "obsidian-mcp-pro"],
      "env": {
        "OBSIDIAN_VAULT_PATH": "/path/to/your/vault"
      }
    }
  }
}

Claude Code

claude mcp add obsidian-mcp-pro -- npx -y obsidian-mcp-pro

HTTP Transport (Remote Clients, Cursor, ChatGPT, Web)

MCP_HTTP_TOKEN=your-secret npx -y obsidian-mcp-pro --transport=http --port=3333

Endpoint: http://127.0.0.1:3333/mcp (Streamable HTTP). HTTP transport requires a bearer token:

MCP_HTTP_TOKEN=your-secret npx -y obsidian-mcp-pro --transport=http

The HTTP server binds to 127.0.0.1 by default with DNS rebinding protection enabled. Startup always requires MCP_HTTP_TOKEN, including loopback-only local servers. The old --token flag was removed because command-line secrets can be exposed through OS process listings.

[!WARNING] Never bind --host=0.0.0.0 directly to the public internet. Doing so exposes your entire Obsidian vault to anyone who can reach the port. The server refuses HTTP startup without a bearer token, but if you need remote access:

• Put the server behind a reverse proxy (nginx, Caddy, Cloudflare Tunnel) that terminates TLS, and
• Set MCP_HTTP_TOKEN, and
• Restrict --allow-origin to the specific origins you trust, and
• Set --rate-limit to cap request volume per IP.

For local-only setups (same machine / VPN / SSH tunnel), keep the default 127.0.0.1 bind.

Additional hardening flags:

Flag	Purpose
--allow-origin=<csv>	Restrict CORS to an allowlist (e.g. https://claude.ai,https://chat.openai.com). Default is localhost-only; * requires bearer auth.
--rate-limit=<n>	Cap requests per minute per client IP. /health and /version are exempt. Default is unlimited.

Operational endpoints (no auth required):

Endpoint	Returns
GET /health	{ status: "ok", version: <string> } — liveness for monitoring.
GET /version	{ version: <string> } — package version, for rollout auditing.

Structured logging is controlled by LOG_LEVEL (debug/info/warn/error/silent, default info) and LOG_FORMAT (text/json, default text). All logs go to stderr so the stdio transport on stdout is never polluted, with absolute paths, vault-relative path fields, secret-bearing URLs, and control characters redacted before write.

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Usage

Once installed, the server exposes 41 tools, 5 prompts, and 3 resources to whichever MCP client you configured. Below is a transcript of a Claude Desktop conversation showing what day-to-day use looks like.

You: Find notes tagged #project I touched this week, then summarize the status of each and append today's date under a "Last reviewed" heading in each one.

Claude picks the right tools in order, with no guidance beyond the prompt:

🔧 search_by_tag(tag="project", includeContent=false)
  → 7 notes: "Atlas/overview.md", "Atlas/milestones.md", "Beacon/spec.md", ...

🔧 list_notes(folder="Atlas", limit=100)
  → filters to recent modifications via get_note stats

🔧 get_note(path="Atlas/overview.md")
  → reads content + frontmatter + tags

🔧 get_note(path="Atlas/milestones.md")
  → ...

🔧 append_to_note(
    path="Atlas/overview.md",
    content="\n## Last reviewed\n2026-04-21 — on track; waiting on design review."
  )
  → ok

🔧 append_to_note(
    path="Atlas/milestones.md",
    content="\n## Last reviewed\n2026-04-21 — Q2 milestone at risk, see spec.md."
  )
  → ok

Claude: I reviewed 7 project notes tagged #project. Atlas is on track pending design review; the Q2 milestone is at risk — details in milestones.md. Beacon's spec is complete but has 3 open questions in the frontmatter. I appended a "Last reviewed" section to each.

Other things the tool set lets agents do without hand-holding:

• Research a topic across the vault. search_notes → get_outlinks → get_graph_neighbors walks the graph to depth=2 and surfaces related notes the user may have forgotten.
• Clean up dangling references after a rename. move_note → find_broken_links returns every wikilink that now points nowhere, with source note and line number.
• Maintain a daily log. get_daily_note reads today's note (using the vault's configured date format) and append_to_note adds the new entry — daily-note plugin config is honored, no manual date formatting.
• Canvas editing. read_canvas → agent reasons about the node graph → add_canvas_node + add_canvas_edge lays out new ideas on an existing board.

Tool descriptions + typed schemas + safety hints (readOnlyHint, destructiveHint) are what make this work reliably — the agent knows delete_note is destructive and asks first, knows search_notes is free to call speculatively, and knows the expected shape of every argument.

---

Configuration

The server locates your vault using the following priority:

Priority	Method	Description
1	OBSIDIAN_VAULT_PATH	Environment variable with the absolute path to your vault
2	OBSIDIAN_VAULT_NAME	Environment variable to select a vault by folder name when multiple vaults exist
3	Auto-detection	Reads Obsidian's global config (obsidian.json) and uses the first valid vault found

Auto-detection works on macOS, Windows, and Linux by reading the platform-specific Obsidian configuration directory.

Environment Variables

Every setting is optional unless noted. The sections below explain the grouped ones in depth.

Variable	Purpose	Default
OBSIDIAN_VAULT_PATH	Absolute path to the vault (highest-priority vault selector).	auto-detect
OBSIDIAN_VAULT_NAME	Select a vault by folder name when several exist.	first valid vault
OBSIDIAN_READ_PATHS	Comma/colon list of folders read tools may access (see Folder-Scoped Permissions).	unrestricted
OBSIDIAN_WRITE_PATHS	Same shape, for mutating tools.	unrestricted
OBSIDIAN_CACHE_DISABLED	Set truthy to disable the in-memory mtime cache (see Caches).	enabled
OBSIDIAN_EMBEDDING_PROVIDER	Semantic-search provider, e.g. openai (see Semantic Search Provider).	unset (disabled)
OBSIDIAN_EMBEDDING_MODEL	Embedding model name for the chosen provider.	provider default
OBSIDIAN_EMBEDDING_URL	Override the embedding endpoint base URL.	provider default
OBSIDIAN_EMBEDDING_API_KEY	API key for the embedding provider.	falls back to OPENAI_API_KEY
OPENAI_API_KEY	Used as the embedding key when OBSIDIAN_EMBEDDING_API_KEY is unset.	unset
MCP_HTTP_TOKEN	Bearer token required by the HTTP transport (see HTTP Transport).	unset
LOG_LEVEL	Logger verbosity: debug, info, warn, error.	info
LOG_FORMAT	Log output format: text or json.	text

Daily-Note Filename Format

get_daily_note, create_daily_note, and the obsidian://daily resource render the note path using your vault's .obsidian/daily-notes.json format string. Moment.js-style tokens are supported:

Token	Example		Token	Example
YYYY	2026		dddd	Thursday
YY	26		ddd	Thu
MMMM	April		dd	Th
MMM	Apr		HH / H	05 / 5
MM / M	04 / 4		hh / h	05 / 5
DD / D	09 / 9		mm / m	07 / 7
Do	9th		ss / s	03 / 3
DDDD / DDD	099 / 99		Q	2
[literal]	renders the bracket contents verbatim, e.g. YYYY-[Q]Q → 2026-Q2

Unrecognized tokens pass through unchanged. Local time is used (matching Obsidian's rendering).

Folder-Scoped Permissions

Restrict the tools' read/write surface to specific folders without exposing the rest of the vault:

Env var	Purpose
OBSIDIAN_READ_PATHS	Comma- or colon-separated list of folders that read tools may access. Unset means unrestricted. Use . to mean the vault root.
OBSIDIAN_WRITE_PATHS	Same shape, but for mutations (create / append / update / delete / move / surgical edits).

Read and write are independent, so an audit account can be read-only on most of the vault but write-only to a Drafts/ folder. Moving a note requires read access to the source and write access to the destination, because the move carries the source content into its new folder. Surgical edits (replace_in_note, update_section, insert_at_section, and edit_block) require read access to the target plus write access because they inspect existing content before writing. In-vault symlinks are checked against their real target before the allowlist decision is finalized. The startup log line and --help advertise the active scope. The allowlist is enforced at a single path-resolution choke point so every tool inherits it.

Caches

The note-content mtime cache is in-memory only. It speeds repeated vault-wide scans inside the running process, but it does not persist note bodies or absolute paths to disk. Any legacy <vault>/.obsidian/cache/mcp-pro-index-cache.json snapshot is ignored and removed on first cache use.

Semantic embeddings live under <vault>/.obsidian/cache/:

File	Purpose
mcp-pro-embeddings.json	Persisted embeddings for semantic search (only present once index_vault has run). Vault-relocation safe via an embedded vaultRoot check; switching providers/models or stale note content invalidates entries automatically.

The embedding cache is vault-local, excluded from vault scans (.obsidian/ is pruned), and can be deleted at any time. Persistence can be turned off with OBSIDIAN_CACHE_DISABLED=1.

Semantic Search Provider

The semantic-search tools (index_vault, search_semantic, find_similar_notes) need an embedding provider. Configure via env:

Env var	Default	Notes
OBSIDIAN_EMBEDDING_PROVIDER	ollama if unset or blank	ollama, openai, or none to disable.
OBSIDIAN_EMBEDDING_MODEL	nomic-embed-text (Ollama), text-embedding-3-small (OpenAI) if unset or blank	Provider-specific model identifier.
OBSIDIAN_EMBEDDING_URL	http://localhost:11434 (Ollama), https://api.openai.com/v1 (OpenAI) if unset or blank	Base URL without credentials, query strings, or fragments.
OBSIDIAN_EMBEDDING_API_KEY	OPENAI_API_KEY falls back if unset or blank	Required for hosted providers.

For local Ollama: install Ollama, then ollama pull nomic-embed-text. The semantic tools register even when no provider is configured, so they're discoverable; calls return a configuration hint until set up.

index_vault sends readable note chunks to that provider. Calls must include:

{ "confirm": "send-vault-text-to-embedding-provider" }

This latch is per call so scripted index refreshes have to keep the privacy decision visible.

Observability

Logs stream to stderr as either plain text (default) or single-line JSON, controlled by LOG_LEVEL (debug/info/warn/error/silent) and LOG_FORMAT (text/json). Local stderr and MCP-forwarded log payloads both redact absolute paths, vault-relative path fields, secret-bearing URLs, and control characters.

The server also declares the MCP logging capability, so every log line is forwarded to the connected client as a notifications/message frame alongside tool responses. Clients that honor logging/setLevel can filter server-side logs at runtime without restarting. Claude Desktop surfaces these in its MCP DevTools pane; most other clients currently ignore them, so this is useful primarily for self-hosters and tooling authors.

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Security

• Vault boundary — every tool and resource routes through a single path resolver that rejects .. traversal, null-byte injection, and symlinks pointing outside the vault (ancestor-realpath check). On Windows it also rejects reserved device names, alternate data stream syntax, and trailing-dot/space filename aliases.
• Note/file boundary — note read and edit surfaces only target .md files; attachments, Canvas files, and Bases stay on their dedicated tools with their own caps and parsers.
• Full-note cap — full .md note reads and read-modify-write helpers refuse notes over 5 MiB before materializing them; get_note line fragments still stream from large notes for targeted inspection.
• Excluded directories — .obsidian, .git, and .trash are pruned at traversal time and at resolution time, so nested occurrences never leak back to clients.
• HTTP transport — requires a bearer token at startup and binds to 127.0.0.1 by default with DNS rebinding protection (host-header allowlist). /mcp requests must send Authorization: Bearer <secret>, compared in constant time. Malformed request URL or Host data is rejected before routing.
• Attachment safety — executable extensions are blocked, SVGs are returned as text/plain, and active text formats such as HTML/XML/CSS are served with text/plain resource metadata.
• Canvas link safety — Canvas link nodes added through the server accept only absolute http:// and https:// URLs, preventing local file and application-protocol links from being persisted by tool calls.
• Regex edit safety — replace_in_note caps regex pattern/input size and rejects backtracking-prone repeated groups before matching.
• Error and log sanitization — filesystem error messages are stripped of absolute host paths before being returned to MCP clients, local stderr and MCP-forwarded logs redact paths and secret-bearing URLs, ASCII control bytes and Unicode bidi controls are escaped in displayed values, and note-derived duplicate-alias text is not copied into graph warnings. Uncaught HTTP errors respond with a generic Internal server error body while server logs keep sanitized diagnostics.
• Untrusted vault text boundaries — tool outputs that include note bodies, read, search result, semantic result, semantic index failure, write rewrite-warning, link-graph, attachment, Base, and Canvas path summaries, attachment extension summaries, search snippets, semantic snippets and heading paths, tag lists, tag search result paths and previews, tag rename skipped-note rows, frontmatter values, Base data, wikilink targets in link-analysis output, SVG attachment text, section headings, Canvas node identities, colors, previews, edge endpoints, and edge labels, or backlink context wrap those vault-authored portions in [BEGIN UNTRUSTED VAULT CONTENT: ...] / [END UNTRUSTED VAULT CONTENT: ...] markers before they enter an MCP client's model context. Note and daily resources use the same visible boundaries for markdown bodies and carry _meta["obsidian-mcp-pro/contentTrust"] = "untrusted-vault-content".
• YAML parser boundaries — Obsidian properties are parsed only from --- YAML delimiter lines; non-YAML gray-matter language blocks stay as body text, oversized frontmatter is skipped on reads and refused for metadata updates, and note/Base YAML containing anchors or aliases is not parsed.
• Semantic index freshness — search_semantic and find_similar_notes re-check current note content hashes before returning stored snippets or source-note embeddings, pruning stale cache entries instead of surfacing old note text.
• Semantic indexing confirmation — index_vault refuses to read and embed vault notes unless the call includes confirm: "send-vault-text-to-embedding-provider", making provider-bound note transfer explicit.
• Bulk-write confirmations — move_note reference rewrites require confirmPath to match the destination path, and non-dry-run rename_tag requires confirmTag to match the new tag. Clients that support MCP elicitation are also asked to re-type the destination path or new tag before the rewrite runs.
• Atomic writes — every note write (create_note, append, prepend, update_frontmatter, canvas mutations) stages content to a sibling temp file then renames onto the target, so a crash or kill mid-write never leaves a truncated file. Combined with per-path locks for the full read-modify-write cycle, concurrent callers can't lose each other's updates. The install subcommand uses the same pattern and keeps a backup of the previous config.
• Rate limiting + CORS allowlist — optional --rate-limit caps per-IP request volume; --allow-origin restricts browser-facing CORS and refuses * unless bearer auth is enabled. /health and /version stay reachable under load for monitoring.
• Request timeout — HTTP POST requests are capped at 2 minutes of wall-clock time. Long-lived SSE GET streams are exempt so idle clients aren't reaped.
• Process supervision — uncaughtException exits cleanly so systemd/Docker/npx supervisors can restart; unhandledRejection logs but doesn't kill the process.

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Wikilink Resolution

[[Target]] resolves in the same order Obsidian does:

1. Exact relative-path match (case-insensitive).
2. Path-suffix match (e.g. [[projects/foo]] picks work/projects/foo.md).
3. Basename match. When multiple notes share a basename, the one that shares the deepest directory prefix with the linking note wins; ties break on shortest overall path.
4. Frontmatter aliases — [[Display Name]] resolves to a note whose frontmatter declares that alias. aliases, Aliases, and ALIASES are all recognized.

Tag extraction is similarly case-tolerant: tags, Tags, TAGS, tag, and Tag frontmatter keys are all read.

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Tool Reference

Read

Tool	Description	Key Parameters
search_notes	Focus-ranked full-text search with query-centered snippets (cached)	query, caseSensitive, maxResults, folder
get_note	Read a note whole, or by section / block / lines	path, section, block, lines
list_notes	List notes in the vault or a folder	folder, limit
get_daily_note	Get today's (or a specific date's) daily note	date
search_by_frontmatter	Find notes by frontmatter property values with case-insensitive key/value matching	property, value, folder
get_recent_notes	Notes sorted by mtime; optional ISO-or-relative since filter	limit, since, folder
get_vault_stats	Vault counts, bytes, words, tag coverage, most-recent note	folder
resolve_alias	Translate frontmatter alias (or basename) to note path	name, includeBasename

Write

Tool	Description	Key Parameters
create_note	Create a new note with content and frontmatter	path, content, frontmatter
append_to_note	Append content to an existing note	path, content, ensureNewline
prepend_to_note	Prepend content after frontmatter	path, content
update_frontmatter	Update frontmatter properties on a note	path, properties
create_daily_note	Create today's daily note from template	date, content, templatePath
move_note	Move or rename a note; rewrites references across the vault	oldPath, newPath, updateLinks, confirmPath
delete_note	Delete a note (trash by default); optional elicitation on permanent	path, permanent, removeReferences

Section-level edits

Tool	Description	Key Parameters
update_section	Replace the body under a heading path (heading kept)	path, section, newBody
insert_at_section	Insert at before / after-heading / append of a section	path, section, content, position
list_sections	Return the heading outline of a note as an indented tree	path
replace_in_note	Find/replace within one note (literal or regex, with match-count guard)	path, find, replace, regex, flags, expectedCount
edit_block	Replace content of a paragraph tagged ^id (anchor preserved)	path, block, newContent

Tags

Tool	Description	Key Parameters
get_tags	Get all tags and their usage counts	sortBy
search_by_tag	Find all notes with a specific tag	tag, includeContent
rename_tag	Rewrite inline + frontmatter occurrences vault-wide; hierarchical	oldName, newName, hierarchical, dryRun, confirmTag

Links & graph

Tool	Description	Key Parameters
get_backlinks	Get all notes that link to a given note	path
get_outlinks	Get all links from a given note	path
find_orphans	Find notes with no links in or out	includeOutlinksCheck
find_broken_links	Detect links pointing to non-existent notes	folder
get_graph_neighbors	Get notes connected within N link hops	path, depth, direction

Canvas

Tool	Description	Key Parameters
list_canvases	List all .canvas files in the vault	(none)
read_canvas	Read a bounded .canvas node/edge summary	path
add_canvas_node	Add a node to a canvas	canvasPath, type, content, x, y
add_canvas_edge	Add an edge between two canvas nodes	canvasPath, fromNode, toNode

Bases

Tool	Description	Key Parameters
list_bases	Enumerate .base files in the vault	(none)
read_base	Parse a Base file (filters, properties, views)	path
query_base	Run a Base's filter DSL against the vault; unsupported filters warn and fail closed	path, view, limit, includeFrontmatter

Attachments

Tool	Description	Key Parameters
list_attachments	Enumerate every non-md/canvas/base file	extension, limit
find_unused_attachments	Attachments not referenced via embeds or markdown links	limit, includeBytes
get_attachment	Return image / audio / blob content (5 MB default cap)	path, maxBytes

Semantic search

Tool	Description	Key Parameters
index_vault	Build / refresh the embedding index (incremental, progress events)	force, folder, confirm
search_semantic	Cosine search the embedding index for a natural-language query	query, limit, folder, includeSnippet
find_similar_notes	Surface notes most similar to a source note, anchored to its opening topic (no live API call)	path, limit

---

MCP Resources

Resources provide a URI-based way to access vault data:

Resource URI	Description
obsidian://note/{path}	Read any note by its vault-relative path
obsidian://tags	Full tag index with file lists (JSON)
obsidian://daily	Today's daily note content

---

Troubleshooting

Tools Don't Show Up in Claude Desktop

MCP clients only re-read their config on startup. After editing claude_desktop_config.json (or running npx obsidian-mcp-pro install), fully quit Claude Desktop (⌘Q on macOS, tray → Quit on Windows) and relaunch. Hot-reloading the window is not enough.

"No Obsidian vault configured" on Startup

The server couldn't locate a vault. Resolution order is:

1. OBSIDIAN_VAULT_PATH env var (absolute path) — always wins if set.
2. OBSIDIAN_VAULT_NAME env var — picks a named vault from Obsidian's global config.
3. Auto-detection — reads obsidian.json (platform-specific) and uses the first valid vault found.

Fastest fix: set OBSIDIAN_VAULT_PATH in the env block of your MCP client's config. Auto-detection fails when Obsidian has never been launched, obsidian.json is missing/corrupt, or all registered vaults resolve to paths that no longer exist.

"Path traversal detected" Error on Tool Calls

All tool paths must be vault-relative (e.g. notes/hello.md), never absolute (/Users/me/vault/notes/hello.md) or containing ... The agent normally gets this right — if you see this error, check whether a custom instruction is asking it to use absolute paths.

HTTP Transport Returns 401 Unauthorized

The server was started with MCP_HTTP_TOKEN but the client isn't sending a matching Authorization: Bearer <secret> header. Verify the token value and that the header is present — comparison is case-sensitive and constant-time.

HTTP Transport Returns 429 Too Many Requests

--rate-limit=<n> is set and the client exceeded N requests in the last 60 seconds from that IP. Either raise the limit, drop it, or wait 60 seconds. /health and /version are exempt if you need to check liveness under load.

Daily-Note Path Is Wrong or Unresolved

The server reads .obsidian/daily-notes.json from the vault for the filename format and folder. If that file doesn't exist (the Daily Notes core plugin has never been configured), the server falls back to YYYY-MM-DD.md in the vault root. Configure the plugin once inside Obsidian and the server picks it up automatically.

npx obsidian-mcp-pro Silently Exits With Code 0

This was a bug in versions < 1.4.1 where the npx-symlinked CLI entry failed to detect itself as the entrypoint. Upgrade: npx -y obsidian-mcp-pro@latest install.

Windows: "EPERM: operation not permitted" During Writes

The server retries these transparently (Windows holds stricter file-sharing locks than POSIX) — if you still see the error, it usually means antivirus or a sync client (OneDrive, Dropbox) is holding the file. Exclude the vault folder from real-time antivirus scanning, or pause the sync client during heavy agent sessions.

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Development

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/rps321321/obsidian-mcp-pro.git
cd obsidian-mcp-pro

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Build
npm run build

# Run the full local maintenance gate
npm run verify

# Run in development (watch mode)
npm run dev

# Start the server locally
OBSIDIAN_VAULT_PATH=/path/to/vault npm start

GitHub Actions workflows are manual-only in this repository. Use npm run verify as the required local gate before merging or publishing.

Commits run a local Husky hook that rejects maintainer-only paths, formats staged files, then runs the type-checker and test suite. Run npm ci after cloning to install the hook.

Project Structure

src/
  index.ts                # Server entry, CLI parser, resource + prompt registration
  config.ts               # Vault detection, daily-notes config loader
  http-server.ts          # Streamable HTTP transport, Bearer auth, session TTL
  install.ts              # `install` subcommand (Claude Desktop / Cursor)
  types.ts                # Shared TypeScript interfaces
  lib/
    vault.ts              # Core vault ops (read, search, list, per-file locks,
                          # symlink boundary, canvas + base + attachment round-trip)
    permissions.ts        # OBSIDIAN_READ_PATHS / OBSIDIAN_WRITE_PATHS allowlist
    markdown.ts           # Frontmatter, wikilinks, tags, alias-aware resolver
    sections.ts           # Heading parser, block-id parser, section bounds
    tag-rewriter.ts       # Vault-wide tag rewriting (inline + frontmatter)
    link-rewriter.ts      # Plan/apply edit pipeline used by move + delete
    bases.ts              # Bases YAML parser + filter DSL evaluator
    chunker.ts            # Heading-aware chunking for embeddings
    embedding-providers.ts# Ollama + OpenAI providers
    embedding-store.ts    # Persistent vector index, cosine search
    index-cache.ts        # mtime-keyed content cache (in-memory)
    progress.ts           # MCP progress-notification helper
    mime.ts               # extension -> MIME map for attachments
    dates.ts              # Moment-style date format for daily-note filenames
    errors.ts             # sanitizeError: strips absolute paths from fs errors
    concurrency.ts        # Bounded-concurrency fan-out helper
    logger.ts             # Leveled stderr logger (text + JSON modes)
  tools/
    read.ts               # search, get, list, daily, frontmatter, recent, stats, alias
    write.ts              # create, append, prepend, update_frontmatter, move, delete
    sections.ts           # update_section, insert_at_section, list_sections,
                          # replace_in_note, edit_block
    tags.ts               # get_tags, search_by_tag, rename_tag
    links.ts              # backlinks, outlinks, orphans, broken, graph_neighbors
    canvas.ts             # list, read, add_node, add_edge
    bases.ts              # list_bases, read_base, query_base
    attachments.ts        # list_attachments, find_unused_attachments, get_attachment
    semantic.ts           # index_vault, search_semantic, find_similar_notes
    prompts.ts            # daily-review, weekly-rollup, find-stale-notes,
                          # extract-action-items, build-moc
  __tests__/
    vault.test.ts            markdown.test.ts            tools.test.ts
    security.test.ts         http-server.test.ts         semantics.test.ts
    logger.test.ts           sections.test.ts            tag-rewriter.test.ts
    bases.test.ts            permissions.test.ts         index-cache.test.ts
    chunker.test.ts          embedding-store.test.ts     errors.test.ts
    link-rewriter.test.ts
    handlers/
      read.test.ts          write.test.ts          tags.test.ts
      links.test.ts         canvas.test.ts         attachments.test.ts
      semantic.test.ts      harness.ts

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Testing

npm test

952 tests covering vault operations, atomic writes + concurrent-mutation races, markdown parsing (frontmatter, wikilinks, tags, fenced + indented code blocks, multi-backtick inline code), section / block-id parsing, tag rewriting (inline + frontmatter, hierarchical sub-tags), Bases filter DSL, attachment classification, semantic chunking + cosine ranking + persistent embedding store, moment-token date formatting, canvas round-trip fidelity, HTTP transport (Bearer auth, oversize-body, CORS allowlist with Vary: Origin, per-IP rate limiting, /version), leveled logger (text + JSON output), folder-permission allowlist, mtime-cache rehydration across simulated restarts, vault-wide link rewriting on move_note and delete_note (TOCTOU correctness, control-char injection escape), and security regression guards (symlink escape, case-only rename, path-leak sanitization, cross-process exclusive-create). Handler tests exercise every tool through a real MCP client/server pair via InMemoryTransport.

npm run lint       # eslint v9 + typescript-eslint v8 (flat config)
npm run lint:fix   # auto-fix

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What's New

v1.8.2 rolls in a deeper-dive audit pass on top of 1.8.1:

• rename_tag and other vault-wide bulk writers now hold the same rewrite lock as move_note / delete_note. Closes a cross-tool TOCTOU where running tag-rename concurrently with a move could surface "content changed during move" failures and leave stale links.
• applyRewrites retries failed edits via content search. When bytes shift between plan and apply (Obsidian sync, text editor, concurrent tool), the apply step now finds the unique expected substring at its new position and splices there. If ambiguous or missing, the failure is still surfaced rather than corrupting the file.
• planMoveRewrites and planDeleteRewrites now read each note exactly once. The previous two-pass implementation doubled I/O on rename / delete operations across large vaults.
• CommonMark fenced-code indentation now matches the spec. Lines with more than 3 leading spaces no longer falsely close a fenced block (and don't expose subsequent content to wikilink rewriting).
• /health no longer leaks the live session count when a Bearer token is configured. Status + version stay public for monitoring; sessions is dropped in authenticated deployments. In 4.0.0 and later, HTTP always starts with bearer auth, so the field stays hidden.
• constantTimeEqual is now fully length-safe (pads both inputs to a fixed width before comparing), and the regex / parser hardening list also closed: resolveWikilink proximity tie-break for path-suffix matches, escaped ] in markdown link labels, control- character validation on runInstall.vaultName, backup-path hint on install write failure, and mapConcurrent return-value usage in the canvas planner.
• npm audit clean. Resolved 4 moderate-severity advisories in transitive devDependencies. Production deps were already clean.

v1.8.1 was a security and correctness patch on top of 1.8.0:

• CRITICAL: permission allowlist bypass via .. segments closed. v1.8.0 evaluated OBSIDIAN_READ_PATHS / OBSIDIAN_WRITE_PATHS against the raw user-supplied path before path.resolve collapsed ... An input like Allowed/../OtherFolder/note.md slipped past the prefix check. assertAllowed now collapses .. via path.posix.normalize and rejects any path that climbs above its starting point. Six regression tests cover the bypass classes.
• HIGH: HTTP timeout on every embedding-provider fetch (AbortSignal.timeout(30s)), TOCTOU race in rename_tag closed by moving the rewrite inside updateNote's transform, and search_semantic / find_similar_notes now invalidate stale vectors when the active provider/model differs from what produced the index.
• MEDIUM: depth guard on Bases filter recursion, updateNote skips the disk write when the transform returns unchanged content (no more spurious mtime bumps on no-op tools), and embedding-provider error bodies are truncated to 200 chars before being interpolated into thrown errors.
• LOW: empty accept elicitation responses are now cancellations, not errors, and the in-memory mtime cache snapshot orders by content length so small entries fill the budget first.

v1.8.0 was the largest feature drop since v1.0:

• Surgical edits by heading and block id. update_section, insert_at_section, list_sections, replace_in_note, edit_block, plus fragment retrieval modes on get_note (section, block, lines).
• Bases support. list_bases, read_base, query_base for Obsidian's database-view files. First filesystem-only MCP server to ship native Bases.
• Semantic search. index_vault, search_semantic, find_similar_notes backed by Ollama (default) or OpenAI. Persistent vector index with content-hash incremental updates.
• Attachments. list_attachments, find_unused_attachments, get_attachment (returns image / audio / blob bytes inline).
• Tag renames vault-wide. rename_tag rewrites both inline #tag and frontmatter tags: (hierarchical mode rebases nested sub-tags).
• Folder-scoped permissions. OBSIDIAN_READ_PATHS / OBSIDIAN_WRITE_PATHS allowlists.
• In-memory mtime cache. Vault-wide scans (get_tags, search_notes, search_by_tag) reuse unchanged note content within the running process without persisting note bodies to disk.
• Quick wins. get_recent_notes, get_vault_stats, resolve_alias.
• MCP prompts. daily-review, weekly-rollup, find-stale-notes, extract-action-items, build-moc.
• Progress notifications on rename_tag, find_unused_attachments, index_vault.
• Bulk-write confirmation latches on delete_note(permanent: true), move_note reference rewrites, and non-dry-run rename_tag, plus elicitation prompts for clients that support them.
• eslint wired up with typescript-eslint flat config; npm run lint and lint:fix.

v1.7.0 — delete_note reference handling:

• delete_note can strip references vault-wide when permanent: true is paired with removeReferences: true. Wikilinks fall back to alias-or-basename, markdown links fall back to visible text, embeds drop entirely, fragments are discarded. Trash-mode (default) leaves references intact since trashed files stay recoverable.
• Concurrent-safe rewrites — move_note (with updateLinks: true) and delete_note (with removeReferences: true) serialize per vault, removing the partial-failure mode for parallel rewrite-bearing operations.

v1.6.0 — Obsidian-parity link maintenance:

• move_note rewrites references across the vault by default, matching Obsidian's "Automatically update internal links" behavior. Wikilinks (with aliases / fragments preserved), markdown links, and canvas nodes[].file fields all follow the moved file. Output form is preserved when possible.
• TOCTOU correctness — every edit's pre-edit content is verified before splicing, so a parallel write_note between plan and apply is surfaced in failedReferrers rather than corrupting referrers silently.
• Control-char injection defense — sanitizeError and the new escapeControlChars strip newlines/control bytes from any caller-controlled string before it reaches LLM context. Closes a prompt-injection vector via attacker-named filenames.

Full version history in CHANGELOG.md.

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License

MIT

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Contributing

Contributions welcome! Please open an issue first to discuss what you'd like to change. Pull requests without a corresponding issue may be closed.

If you're adding or editing a tool, read docs/TOOL_AUTHORING.md first — it documents the description, schema, and annotation conventions that keep every tool at A-grade quality.

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Acknowledgments

• Vault-wide link rewriting on move_note (#3, #4) and the sanitizeError defense-in-depth hardening contributed by @brentkearney.

For the full list of everyone who's contributed, see the contributors page.