Obsidian Tools

You run the Obsidian Tools MCP Server to manage your Obsidian vault via MCP clients. It provides full CRUD for notes, powerful search, link and tag exploration, and template-based creation, all accessible through a local stdio MCP server you start on your machine.

How to use

You connect to the Obsidian Tools MCP Server with an MCP client to perform operations such as creating, updating, or deleting notes, searching by filename or content, and managing frontmatter and templates. Use the server to automate common vault tasks, build note workflows, and enable large-scale note management with consistent results.

How to install

Prerequisites you need before starting the server are straightforward.

# Prerequisites
- Node.js 18+
- An Obsidian vault

# Clone the MCP server
git clone https://github.com/yourusername/obsidian-tools-mcp.git
cd obsidian-tools-mcp

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Build the project
npm run build

# Run the server directly (stdio configuration)
npx -y @obsidian/tools-mcp

Additional notes

To run the server locally and connect with your Obsidian vault, you typically use a stdio MCP configuration that launches the Node.js process pointing at the built entry script and sets the vault path via an environment variable.

Configuration and run details

Two common ways are shown to start the server from your development setup. Use the stdio approach when you want a local process you can control from your IDE or scripts.

// VS Code / Copilot style configuration
{
  "mcp": {
    "servers": {
      "obsidian_tools": {
        "command": "node",
        "args": ["/path/to/obsidian-tools-mcp/dist/index.js"],
        "env": {
          "OBSIDIAN_VAULT_PATH": "/path/to/your/obsidian/vault"
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

// Claude Desktop style configuration
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "obsidian_tools": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["/path/to/obsidian-tools-mcp/dist/index.js"],
      "env": {
        "OBSIDIAN_VAULT_PATH": "/path/to/your/obsidian/vault"
      }
    }
  }
}

Available tools

create_note

Create a new note with markdown content at a given path, supporting nested folders.

delete_note

Delete a note from the vault by its path.

update_note

Replace the entire content of an existing note.

append_to_note

Append content to the end of a note, with an optional separator.

prepend_to_note

Prepend content to a note, preserving frontmatter when present.

rename_note

Move or rename a note to a new path.

read_note

Read and return the content of a single note.

search_notes

Search notes by filename pattern, with optional regex support and limit.

search_content

Full-text search across note contents with optional case sensitivity and limit.

list_folder

List notes and subfolders within a folder path.

get_tags

Extract and return all tags from a note.

get_links

Return all internal wikilinks and markdown links found in a note.

get_backlinks

Find all notes that link to a specific note.

insert_at_heading

Insert content under a specific heading within a note.

update_frontmatter

Modify YAML frontmatter properties for a note.

create_from_template

Create a new note from a template with optional variable substitutions.