Interact with Obsidian vaults via the `obsidian` CLI. Use when the user asks to search notes, read/create/edit vault files, manage tags/properties, check backlinks/orphans, open notes in Obsidian, or perform any vault operation through the command line.
The obsidian CLI communicates directly with a running Obsidian instance. Obsidian must be open for commands to work.
obsidian <command> [key=value ...] [flags]
=): boolean options like total, verbose, open, casefile=<name>, path=<path>, query=<text>, etc.file="My Note", content="Hello world"\n and \tfile= vs path=: file resolves by name (like wikilinks); path is the exact relative path (e.g. path="Calculo I/Derivada.md")file/path is omitted| Task | Command |
|---|---|
| Search with context | obsidian search:context query="term" limit=5 |
| Read a note | obsidian read file="Note Name" |
| Create a note | obsidian create name="Title" path="folder/Title.md" content="..." |
| Append to note | obsidian append file="Note" content="new text" |
| Open in Obsidian | obsidian open file="Note" newtab |
| Backlinks | obsidian backlinks file="Note" counts |
| Outgoing links | obsidian links file="Note" |
| Heading outline | obsidian outline file="Note" |
| List tags | obsidian tags counts sort=count |
| Read property | obsidian property:read name="tags" file="Note" |
| Set property | obsidian property:set name="tags" value="a,b" type=list file="Note" |
| Daily note | obsidian daily:read |
| Orphan notes | obsidian orphans total |
| Broken links | obsidian unresolved verbose |
search:context over plain search — it returns matching lines, not just file paths.format=json when you need to parse output programmatically.file= does fuzzy wikilink resolution — you don't need the full path or .md extension.obsidian tags counts sort=count | head -20 for top tags.2>/dev/null.Read these files for full command tables, options, and examples:
references/vault-files.md — Vault info, file listing, reading, writing, movingreferences/search.md — Search commands and examplesreferences/navigation-links.md — Links, backlinks, orphans, deadends, outlinereferences/tags-properties.md — Tags, properties, aliasesreferences/daily-notes-tasks.md — Daily notes, tasks, bookmarksreferences/plugins-themes.md — Plugin/theme/snippet managementreferences/sync-history.md — Sync, local history, diffreferences/commands-misc.md — Commands, hotkeys, bases, workspace, tabs