obsidian_skill

Overview

This skill handles Obsidian vault operations with a CLI-first approach and an explicit MCP fallback. It covers reading, creating, appending, searching, listing files, daily notes, tasks, tags, links, templates, and vault metadata. Use it whenever you need reliable, scriptable access to an Obsidian vault.

How this skill works

The skill first detects if the Obsidian CLI is available and running; if so, it runs obsidian commands or the shared obsidian-utils.sh script for precise operations. If the CLI is unavailable, it asks the user for permission and then uses MCP tools to perform the same actions. All operations support flags like silent, format=json, inline, overwrite, and permanent to control behavior and output.

When to use it

• Reading note contents or resolving wikilink-style names
• Creating notes, templates, or appending/prepending content
• Searching the vault or listing files/folders programmatically
• Working with daily/periodic notes and automated task handling
• Inspecting tags, backlinks, unresolved links, or vault metadata

Best practices

• Prefer CLI commands when available; they are faster and preserve local context
• Always add silent for non-interactive operations to avoid opening the app
• Use format=json for machine parsing and file= for wikilink-style resolution when path is unknown
• Confirm with the user before using MCP fallback and before destructive actions (delete/permanent)
• Batch operations where possible for efficiency and use template= to create consistent notes

Example use cases

• Read a note by name, falling back to MCP only after confirmation
• Create a TIL note from a template and append a short note to today's daily note silently
• Search the vault for meeting notes and return results as JSON for further processing
• List files in a project folder, then update frontmatter properties across multiple files
• Find unresolved links and generate a report of orphan files for cleanup