obsidian-cli_skill

Overview

This skill provides command-line control of an open Obsidian vault using the official obsidian CLI. It lets you read, create, append, search, and manage notes, tasks, and properties, and includes developer commands for plugin/theme reloads, DOM inspection, screenshots, and error collection. Use it to automate vault operations, integrate Obsidian into scripts, or speed up plugin development and debugging.

How this skill works

The skill constructs obsidian CLI commands and runs them against the focused or specified vault. It accepts file or path targets, supports flags like silent or overwrite, and can copy command output to the clipboard. For plugin development it exposes reload, eval, dev:errors, dev:screenshot, dev:dom, and console inspection commands for a rapid edit–reload–verify loop.

When to use it

• Automate note creation, updates, or batch edits from scripts or CI
• Search vault content or extract snippets programmatically
• Manage tasks, tags, and properties across notes from the command line
• Develop or debug Obsidian plugins and themes with reloads, error checks, and screenshots
• Integrate Obsidian operations into agents, tooling, or editor workflows

Best practices

• Ensure Obsidian is running and focused on the target vault before invoking commands
• Prefer file=<name> for wikilink-style targets and path=<path> for exact file locations
• Use silent to prevent the app from opening files during automated runs
• Use --copy to capture output to the clipboard for downstream steps
• Follow the reload → dev:errors → dev:screenshot cycle when developing plugins to catch regressions early

Example use cases

• Create daily notes and append templated tasks automatically via obsidian daily:append
• Search the vault for a term and export results to another tool or script using obsidian search
• Set or update YAML properties across many notes with property:set in batch jobs
• Reload a plugin after changes, run obsidian dev:errors to capture runtime issues, and take a dev:screenshot to verify UI changes
• Run arbitrary JS in the app context with obsidian eval to inspect state or compute derived data