Obsidian MCP Server

Give Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor or any MCP client your Obsidian vault: search it, read notes with their links and backlinks, follow the graph, and write back to your daily note, without installing an Obsidian plugin, running Obsidian, or creating an API key. It works on the Markdown files directly, the same way Obsidian does.

• 11 tools: vault_info, search_notes (ranked; filter by tag or folder), read_note (whole note or one heading: frontmatter, tags, links and where they resolve, backlinks), list_notes (by folder, tag, recently modified), get_backlinks, list_tags, find_broken_links (missing links and orphan notes), daily_note (uses your Daily notes folder, date format and template), create_note, append_to_note (end of note or under a heading), replace_in_note.
• Understands Obsidian: [[Note]], [[Note|alias]], [[Note#Heading]], ![[embeds]], Markdown links, aliases, frontmatter and inline #tags (including nested #a/b, ignoring code blocks), shortest-path link resolution, moment.js date formats such as YYYY/MMMM/YYYY-MM-DD-dddd, and {{date}}, {{title}}, {{time}} in templates.
• Safe writes: never deletes, never overwrites a note, edits only an exact passage, stays inside the vault and out of .obsidian and hidden folders. --read-only removes the write tools completely.
• Picks up notes you edit in Obsidian while the server is running.
• Python 3.9+ standard library only. MCP 2026-07-28 and the 2025-11-25 handshake on the same server.
• Claude Code plugin with the obsidian-vault skill (search first, cite [[notes]], match your tags and folders, capture into the daily note).

Claude Code (plugin): export OBSIDIAN_VAULT="/absolute/path/to/vault" then claude --plugin-dir /path/to/obsidian-mcp-server

Claude Code (just the server): claude mcp add obsidian -- python3 /path/to/obsidian-mcp-server/server.py --vault "/path/to/vault"

Claude Desktop / Cursor: see examples/configs/ (absolute paths), restart the app. Add "--read-only" to the args to stop all writes.

./demo.sh runs a real MCP session on a copy of a fictional vault (projects, people, a daily note and a template): search, read with links and backlinks, create today's daily note from the template, append under a heading, fix a broken link. ./run_tests.sh runs 14 tests.

Popular Obsidian MCP servers talk to the Local REST API community plugin, so Obsidian must be open with the plugin installed and an API key set. This one reads the vault folder, so it also works with Obsidian closed, over Obsidian Sync or iCloud copies, and on a server. It doesn't run Obsidian commands or plugins (Dataview queries, Templater scripts).

• Search is keyword-ranked (BM25-style), not semantic.
• Templater syntax (<% %>) is left as is; core {{date}}/{{title}}/{{time}} are filled.
• Canvas, PDFs and attachments are listed only as links.
• Back up your vault (Obsidian Sync, git, Time Machine) before letting any AI write to it. Not affiliated with Obsidian.