ObsidianRAG Backend 4

Python 3.11+ backend for the ObsidianRAG API, CLI, revisioned SQLite FTS5 catalog, and embedded LanceDB vector index.

Install

pip install obsidianrag==4.0.0
# or
uv tool install obsidianrag==4.0.0

LanceDB is a standard dependency in 4.0.0; no extra is required.

Commands

obsidianrag serve --vault /path/to/vault
obsidianrag index --vault /path/to/vault
obsidianrag index --vault /path/to/vault --full-rebuild
obsidianrag status --vault /path/to/vault
obsidianrag prune --vault /path/to/vault
obsidianrag search "deployment rollback" --vault /path/to/vault
obsidianrag search "deployment rollback" --vault /path/to/vault --lexical-only
obsidianrag ask "How do I roll back a deployment?" --vault /path/to/vault

index is incremental by default. Use --full-rebuild only when status reports incompatible schema, embedding, or chunk settings, or when recovering a malformed active manifest.

API 4

Start the server:

obsidianrag serve --vault /path/to/vault --host 127.0.0.1 --port 8000

Endpoints:

• GET /capabilities
• GET /health
• GET /models
• POST /ask
• POST /ask/stream
• GET /index/status
• POST /index/build
• POST /index/prune

A fresh server is healthy but not query-ready. It does not build automatically. GET /health reports query_ready, active_revision, and serving_revision so clients can present the correct lifecycle action.

Build request:

{
  "full_rebuild": false
}

Status states:

• missing: build the first index.
• current: active content and configuration match the vault.
• stale: refresh incrementally; an older revision may remain available to current readers.
• rebuild_required: perform an explicit full rebuild.

Storage and safety

Indexes live under .obsidianrag/v4. Builds:

• scan regular Markdown without following symlinks or junctions;
• create isolated copy-on-write revisions;
• copy unchanged vectors in bounded batches;
• fingerprint actual synthetic embedding outputs;
• validate SQLite integrity, foreign keys, FTS semantics, deterministic IDs, paths, dimensions, and finite vectors;
• fsync the candidate before atomically replacing active.json;
• keep the previous serving revision available until all checked-out readers finish.

prune removes inactive revisions only when no reader lease exists.

Legacy .obsidianrag/db data from 3.x is ignored and never removed automatically.

Providers

Generation supports Ollama, LM Studio, and custom Ollama/chat-completions-compatible endpoints. Embeddings support Ollama and HuggingFace.

obsidianrag serve --vault /path/to/vault --provider ollama --model gemma3

obsidianrag serve --vault /path/to/vault \
  --provider lmstudio --model local-model \
  --base-url http://localhost:1234/v1

Environment variables use the OBSIDIANRAG_ prefix.

Evaluation

obsidianrag evaluate evaluation.json --vault /path/to/vault --k 10
obsidianrag evaluate evaluation.json --vault /path/to/vault --lexical-only
obsidianrag compare-evaluations baseline.json candidate.json

External-agent evaluation requires explicit private-data consent:

obsidianrag evaluate-agent private.json \
  --vault /path/to/vault \
  --generator-command "python -m obsidianrag.pi_agent_adapter" \
  --judge-command "python -m obsidianrag.pi_agent_adapter" \
  --allow-private-data

Development

uv sync --locked --dev
uv run pytest
uv run ruff check .
uv run ruff format --check .
uv run mypy .
uv build

Normal tests use temporary/sample vaults and mocked providers.