Interact with Obsidian vaults via the official Obsidian CLI. Read, create, search, and manage notes, tasks, and properties. Supports plugin development with reload, eval, screenshots, and DOM inspection. Requires Obsidian.app installed and open.
Use the obsidian CLI to interact with a running Obsidian instance. Requires Obsidian to be open.
Use the obsidian CLI for: reading and searching vault content, creating and editing notes, managing tasks and properties, and plugin development. Run obsidian help for available commands.
Run obsidian help to see all available commands. This is always up to date. Full docs: https://help.obsidian.md/cli
Parameters take a value with =. Quote values with spaces:
obsidian create name="My Note" content="Hello world"
are boolean switches with no value:
obsidian create name="My Note" silent overwrite
For multiline content, pass a quoted multiline string value.
Many commands accept file or path to target a file. Without either, the active file is used.
file=<name> — resolves like a wikilink (name only, no path or extension needed)path=<path> — exact path from vault root, e.g. folder/note.mdCommands target the most recently focused vault by default. Use vault=<name> as the first parameter to target a specific vault:
obsidian vault="My Vault" search query="test"
obsidian read file="My Note"
obsidian create name="New Note" content="# Hello" template="Template" silent
obsidian append file="My Note" content="New line"
obsidian search query="search term" limit=10
obsidian daily:read
obsidian daily:append content="- [ ] New task"
obsidian property:set name="status" value="done" file="My Note"
obsidian tasks daily list
obsidian tags sort=count counts
obsidian backlinks file="My Note"
Use --copy on any command to copy output to clipboard. Use silent to prevent files from opening. Use total on list commands to get a count.
Use obsidian search to find candidates, then obsidian read to inspect the actual note before answering. Do not answer from search hits, filenames, or snippets alone.
obsidian search query="empanadas" limit=5
obsidian read path="00 Inbox/empanadas.md"
When QMD is available, it is often better for semantic recall and collection routing. A reliable combined pattern is:
qmd query "empanadas recipe" -c inbox -n 5
obsidian read path="00 Inbox/empanadas.md"
If the first hit is ambiguous, read the top 2-3 candidate notes before answering.
Reload a plugin after code changes — essential for the develop/test cycle:
obsidian plugin:reload id=my-plugin
Run JavaScript in the app context:
obsidian eval code="app.vault.getFiles().length"
Check for errors and console output:
obsidian dev:errors
obsidian dev:console
obsidian dev:console level=error
Take a screenshot for visual testing:
obsidian dev:screenshot path=screenshot.png
Inspect DOM and CSS:
obsidian dev:dom selector=".workspace-leaf" text
obsidian dev:css selector=".workspace-leaf" prop=background-color
Toggle mobile emulation:
obsidian dev:mobile on
Run obsidian help to see additional developer commands including CDP and debugger controls.