obsidian-cli_skill

Overview

This skill exposes a terminal-first interface to control Obsidian for automating vault workflows, notes, searches, tasks, and plugin development tasks. It works by sending commands to the running Obsidian app (it will launch the app if needed) and accepts parameters, flags, and file/vault targeting. Use it to script note creation, modify frontmatter, run developer tools, and integrate Obsidian into CI or local automation.

How this skill works

Commands follow the form obsidian <command> with param=value pairs and boolean flags. Target a specific vault with vault=<name>, a note by file=<name> (wikilink resolution) or path=<relative/path.md>, and pass multiline content with \n. Many commands require the Obsidian app to be running; the first CLI invocation starts it when necessary.

When to use it

• Automate creating, appending, or updating notes from scripts or agents.
• Run batch searches, list files, or extract metadata for external tools.
• Manage tasks, tags, backlinks, and frontmatter programmatically.
• Drive plugin development and debugging using dev: and eval commands.
• Trigger daily notes, workspaces, or vault-level operations from CI or cron jobs.

Best practices

• Prefer path=<path> for precise file targeting when duplicates or similar names exist.
• Quote param values that contain spaces and use \n for newlines in content=.
• Use flags like silent and overwrite intentionally; avoid overwrite on important notes.
• For automation, combine search, read, and create commands with exit codes to detect failures.
• Use dev:console, dev:errors and dev:screenshot for reproducible plugin debugging steps.

Example use cases

• Create a meeting note from a template: obsidian create name="Meeting" template=Meetings content="..."
• Append a todo to today's daily note: obsidian daily:append content="- [ ] Call vendor"
• Export a list of files in a folder for external processing: obsidian files folder=projects ext=md format=json
• Toggle a task by file reference: obsidian task ref=notes/project.md:42 toggle
• Run a plugin reload during development: obsidian plugin:reload id=plugin-id