obsidian-mcp

A minimal MCP server that gives Claude Desktop and Cowork access to your local Obsidian vault via the official Obsidian CLI.

Why

Claude Desktop and Cowork run in a sandbox and cannot call the Obsidian CLI directly. This server bridges that gap over the MCP protocol.

Design

One tool: obsidian_run(command). It executes obsidian <command> as a subprocess and returns the output. All CLI knowledge lives in a SKILL.md that the agent loads for syntax reference — not in tool schemas. This keeps the agent's context footprint minimal.

Setup

Requires Python 3.11+, the Obsidian desktop app running, and the obsidian CLI in your PATH.

uvx install fast-obsidian-mcp

Or from a local clone:

uv tool install .

Add to your claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "obsidian": {
      "command": "obsidian-mcp",
      "env": {
        "PATH": "/usr/local/bin:/opt/homebrew/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin"
      }
    }
  }
}

The PATH env is required because Claude Desktop launches MCP servers in a minimal sandbox environment that doesn't inherit your shell's PATH. Without it, the server can't find the obsidian CLI binary. Adjust the paths if your obsidian binary is installed elsewhere (which obsidian to check).

Usage examples

The agent calls obsidian_run with CLI command strings:

read path="Notes/Todo.md"
append path="Notes/Todo.md" "Log" content="New entry"
search query="meeting notes" json
daily:append content="- completed review"
tasks json

See SKILL.md for the full command reference.

Project structure

obsidian_mcp/
  server.py    # FastMCP server, one tool
pyproject.toml
SKILL.md       # CLI syntax reference for the agent