odcli

CLI for reading and writing Obsidian vault notes — locally or over SSH.

odcli operates directly on Markdown files, so it needs no Obsidian API or running Obsidian instance. Point it at a local vault or connect to a remote machine the same way you would with ssh.

Install

pip install odcli

Or with uv:

uv tool install odcli

After installation both odcli and obsidian-cli are available.

Quick start

Local vault

odcli auto-discovers the vault from your Obsidian config or common default locations. No setup needed in most cases:

odcli list
odcli read Inbox/today.md

To point at a specific vault:

export OBSIDIAN_VAULT="/path/to/MyVault"   # or ODCLI_VAULT
odcli list

Or per-command:

odcli --vault "/path/to/MyVault" list

Remote vault over SSH

If the host is in your ~/.ssh/config, use it like ssh:

odcli myserver list
odcli myserver read Inbox/today.md
odcli myserver write Inbox/today.md --content "# Hello"

Or use explicit flags:

odcli --ssh-host myserver --ssh-user me list

SSH details

How the alias is resolved

odcli myserver list is rewritten to odcli --ssh-alias myserver list. HostName, User, Port, and IdentityFile are pulled from ~/.ssh/config (including Include-d files). Any explicit flag or environment variable overrides the config value.

Environment variables

Set defaults in your shell profile so you never have to repeat flags:

Resolution order

Each SSH field is resolved in this order:

1. CLI flag (--ssh-host, --ssh-user, --ssh-port, --ssh-identity)
2. Environment variable (ODCLI_SSH_*)
3. ~/.ssh/config entry for the alias
4. Built-in default:
   • user — current OS user
   • identity — first key found in ~/.ssh (id_ed25519 > id_ecdsa > id_rsa)
   • vault — ~/Documents/Obsidian Vault (macOS/Linux) or Documents\Obsidian Vault (Windows)

Commands

All write commands accept --stdin instead of --content to read from stdin. write also accepts --create-only to fail if the note already exists. mkdir creates the directory and any missing parents by default (like mkdir -p); pass --no-parents for strict mkdir semantics that fail on a missing parent or an existing directory.

AI coding assistant integration

odcli can install helper skills so AI coding tools know how to use it:

odcli plugin install all-skills   # Codex + Claude Code
odcli plugin install codex-skill  # Codex only
odcli plugin install claude-skill # Claude Code only

Vault discovery

When no vault is specified, odcli searches in this order:

1. --vault flag
2. OBSIDIAN_VAULT / ODCLI_VAULT environment variable
3. Most recently opened vault from Obsidian's own config
4. Common default directories:
   • macOS: ~/Documents/Obsidian Vault, ~/Documents/Obsidian, iCloud
   • Windows: %USERPROFILE%\Documents\Obsidian Vault, %USERPROFILE%\Documents\Obsidian

Development

uv sync                                       # install deps
uv run python -m unittest discover -s tests   # run tests
uv build                                      # build wheel + sdist