Obsidian Workflow

obsidian read path="CLAUDE.md"

Active file awareness

If the user refers to something without naming it explicitly — "this note", "what I'm looking at", "the current one" — check the active file first:

obsidian file

This is also useful as context when a request seems ambiguous. If the user sounds like they're talking about something new or unfamiliar, checking the active file may reveal what they mean before asking for clarification.

Keeping conventions current

CLAUDE.md is a living document. If conventions change during a session — new metadata fields, structural decisions, new areas — update it to reflect them.

However, the vault may have drifted from the conventions in CLAUDE.md by accident rather than intent. Before updating CLAUDE.md to match what you observe in the vault, check with the user:

• If the vault state contradicts a convention, ask whether the convention should change or the vault should be corrected
• If something looks like a convention the user may have abandoned, ask before removing it
• Don't silently ratify drift — surface it and let the user decide

The goal is for CLAUDE.md to reflect intentional conventions, not just the current state of the vault.

Obsidian CLI

The obsidian binary communicates with the running Obsidian app via XPC. This requires access to macOS system services that are always blocked by the sandbox. Always run obsidian commands with dangerouslyDisableSandbox: true — do not wait for a failure before doing so.

The vault name is Main Vault. Commands target the most recently focused vault by default. Use vault="Main Vault" explicitly if multiple vaults may be open.

Multi-line content

When creating or appending notes with multi-line content — especially content containing backticks, wikilinks, YAML, or code blocks — use a quoted heredoc to prevent shell interpretation:

obsidian create path="folder/Note Title.md" silent content="$(cat << 'EOF'
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