How do I install Obsidian Notes?

Copy the stdio config for Cursor, Claude Desktop, Claude Code, or VS Code on this page. It uses the publisher's install, not a PlugMCP proxy.

Does Obsidian Notes need an API key?

The publisher lists these environment variables: OBSIDIAN_VAULT.

What transport does Obsidian Notes use?

Obsidian Notes runs locally over stdio.

When was Obsidian Notes last checked?

Last checked 2026-11-09. Search an Obsidian vault by tag, term and wikilink graph. Read-only, deterministic, no embeddings.

Obsidian Notes MCP server

Power your agent

Add this server

The publisher's own command. Not a PlugMCP endpoint.

Add to Cursor Add to VS Code Run on PlugMCP

Host a copy with our keys and logs.

Local command

cargo mcp-obsidian

Credentials from the publisher

OBSIDIAN_VAULT — Absolute path to the Obsidian vault directory to index (read-only). Defaults to the current working directory.

Claude Code has no install link for a local command. Copy the command below and run it in a terminal.

shClaude Code

1OBSIDIAN_VAULT=<value> claude mcp add io.github.moreno-omar-mcp-obsidian -- cargo mcp-obsidian

Run in a terminal.

jsonClaude Desktop

1{2  "mcpServers": {3    "io.github.moreno-omar-mcp-obsidian": {4      "command": "cargo",5      "args": [6        "mcp-obsidian"7      ],8      "env": {9        "OBSIDIAN_VAULT": "<value>"10      }11    }12  }13}

claude_desktop_config.json

Local · cargoPublisher installStep-by-step: add this in Claude

Remote URL or a command on your machine? How the two installs differ

Run on PlugMCP

Host a copy with our keys and logs.

A new server you create. It is not this listing's official endpoint. Use the publisher install when you want their URL and their credentials.

Launch

Server facts

Local

Transport: stdio
Version: 0.1.0
API key

Tools

No tool list yet. Remote servers get one after the first health check.

FAQ

Questions

Install in Claude Desktop

Download the bundle for your Mac or PC from the latest release, open it, point it at your vault.

About "Not signed"

The bundles are unsigned. That is normal for .mcpb: mcpb pack does not sign by default, and signing is a separate opt-in step with a certificate of your own. If you run mcpb info on the download you will see WARNING: Not signed — ignore it. It has no effect on installing or using the extension.

Signing is not enabled yet because the upstream tooling is currently broken: mcpb sign produces a bundle that Claude Desktop refuses to install (#278), and mcpb verify reports signed bundles as unsigned (#276). It will be added once those are fixed.

MCP tool using obsidian

going with the idea that it's better to search for local information using tags and search over RAG.
more possible with the Open Knowledge Format (OKF) that Google is encouraging. Which mostly uses markdown.
markdown, notes, and better access to local info makes me think there should be an app to connect an LLM to obsidian.

Goals

have tool check notes using: title, tags, and follow links in notes
to have as a vault for llm to make notes. To solve problems, document it, and see if new problems are similar.

Non-goals

create a full GUI interface for the app
to allow RAG use

Install

cargo install mcp-obsidian

Then point it at a vault:

mcp-obsidian --vault ~/vault index      # print the index, no model involved
mcp-obsidian --vault ~/vault serve      # stdio MCP server for a desktop host
mcp-obsidian --vault ~/vault serve --http   # Streamable HTTP on 127.0.0.1:8000/mcp

Marketplaces

Published on crates.io: https://crates.io/crates/mcp-obsidian

cargo install mcp-obsidian
mcp-obsidian --vault ~/vault serve

The crate is dual-licensed and its README carries the registry ownership token, so it can also be listed in the Official MCP Registry and shipped as an MCPB bundle without further changes.

PUBLISHING.md — release runbook and the account each directory requires.
DEPLOYMENT.md — hosting behind a public HTTPS URL on a VPS, plus the Smithery and ChatGPT directory submissions and the OAuth they need.

The line below is the package-ownership token the registry verifies against this crate's README. It must stay visible in plain text — crates.io strips HTML comments — and must match the name in server.json.

mcp-name: io.github.moreno-omar/mcp-obsidian

Demo

Everything below runs locally on one desktop — an NVIDIA RTX 4060 Ti (16 GB) serving gemma4:e4b through Ollama, with the vault read from disk. No API keys, no cloud calls, no data leaving the machine: the only network traffic is localhost:11434.

`ask` — one prompt, answered from the vault

mcp-obsidian ask demo

`chat` — the same loop, interactive

mcp-obsidian chat demo

Preview	What it shows
	`index`: every note with its link count and tags, rendered as a table.
	`chat`: the welcome panel, the tool trace and a markdown-rendered answer.
	The vault material behind the Phase 3 exit criterion, `python/python_oneliners/list comprehensions.md`.

Fast, because this is a CLI and not a full-fledged TUI

mcp-obsidian prints, it does not paint. There is no alternate screen, no event loop and no per-frame redraw: colours and layout are computed once per answer with richrs, written to stdout, and the process exits. Measured on the machine above:

step	measured
index a 490-note vault (once, at startup)	~60 ms
vault query (`search`, `index`, MCP tool call)	~60 ms, no model involved
full `ask` round trip (pre-search + tool rounds + answer)	seconds — the local model is the only slow part

A full-fledged TUI pays for a layout pass and a terminal repaint on every frame, and a streaming chat UI adds one per token on top. Here the terminal does one write per answer and the entire budget goes to the model, so retrieval feels instant and the answer lands as soon as the GPU is done. It also keeps the output an ordinary Unix stream: ask "…" > answer.md, | grep, NO_COLOR=1 and FORCE_COLOR=1 all behave the way you expect.

References

https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/data-analytics/how-the-open-knowledge-format-can-improve-data-sharing/

Status

Phase 1 complete (2026-09-28): the CLI can talk to Ollama and the tool set is served over MCP.

Phase 2 complete (2026-10-01): the retrieval and Ollama layers are split into small modules (src/vault/, src/ollama_client/) behind a library target, with 32 tests pinning the behaviour.

Phase 3 complete (2026-10-09): ask is grounded in the vault — an imperative tool protocol plus a deterministic pre-search, so a model that never calls a tool still gets the relevant notes. Output is rendered with richrs in a Tokyo Night theme for ask, chat, doctor, index, search and serve (colours auto-off when piping).

Phase 4 in progress (2026-10-09): published to crates.io as mcp-obsidian v0.1.0 (cargo install mcp-obsidian). The binary is dual-licensed and carries registry metadata; server.json validates against the Official MCP Registry; scripts/build_mcpb.sh produces a schema-valid MCPB bundle for Smithery; and serve --http adds a Streamable-HTTP transport for remote hosts. See DEPLOYMENT.md for hosting it behind a public HTTPS URL and listing it on Smithery and the ChatGPT directory, and logs/2026-10-09_mcp_obsidian_phase4_publishing.md for the detail.

See SUMMARY.md for how it works and why, ARCHITECTURE.md for how to read the code and where to change it, logs/MCP_notes.md for the implementation comparison, and TASKS.md for what is done and what is next.

Usage

cargo build --release

# vault-only commands (no model needed)
./target/release/mcp-obsidian --vault ~/vault index
./target/release/mcp-obsidian --vault ~/vault search tag project --match-all
./target/release/mcp-obsidian --vault ~/vault search term "token budget"
./target/release/mcp-obsidian --vault ~/vault search links index --depth 2
./target/release/mcp-obsidian --vault ~/vault search note projects/alpha

# with Ollama (defaults: http://localhost:11434/v1, gemma4:e4b)
./target/release/mcp-obsidian --vault ~/vault doctor
./target/release/mcp-obsidian --vault ~/vault ask "what do my notes say about token budgets?" --trace
./target/release/mcp-obsidian --vault ~/vault ask "…" --no-prefetch   # no pre-search, tools only
./target/release/mcp-obsidian --vault ~/vault chat

# as an MCP server for a desktop host
./target/release/mcp-obsidian --vault ~/vault serve
./target/release/mcp-obsidian --vault ~/vault serve -vv   # log each tool call to stderr

# as an MCP server over Streamable HTTP (for a host that cannot spawn a process)
./target/release/mcp-obsidian --vault ~/vault serve --http            # 127.0.0.1:8000/mcp
./target/release/mcp-obsidian --vault ~/vault serve --http 0.0.0.0:8000
./target/release/mcp-obsidian --vault ~/vault serve --http 0.0.0.0:8000 \
  --allow-host vault.example.com                                      # accept that Host header

serve speaks stdio by default so stdout stays the JSON-RPC channel; --http switches to Streamable HTTP on /mcp instead. HTTP mode has no authentication — it binds loopback by default and rmcp rejects non-loopback Host headers, so put a reverse proxy in front of it before exposing it publicly. See PUBLISHING.md for what the ChatGPT/plugin directory additionally requires.

A ready-to-edit host configuration is in claude_desktop_config.example.json. Environment variables OBSIDIAN_VAULT, OLLAMA_URL, OLLAMA_MODEL and RUST_LOG override the defaults; --api native switches from /v1/chat/completions to /api/chat. Colour is emitted only to a terminal: NO_COLOR=1 disables it, FORCE_COLOR=1 forces it when piping.

Answers are word-wrapped to the terminal width, with continuation lines aligned under the text instead of under the bullet. Redirected output is deliberately not wrapped, so ask "…" > answer.md keeps the model's own line structure.

A sample vault lives in samples/vault/ for trying the commands above.

Tests

cargo test                            # vault + ollama client; no model needed
cargo test -- --ignored live_client   # needs a running Ollama with the model pulled

License

Licensed under either of Apache License, Version 2.0 or MIT license at your option.

Unless you explicitly state otherwise, any contribution intentionally submitted for inclusion in this crate by you, as defined in the Apache-2.0 license, shall be dual licensed as above, without any additional terms or conditions.

Add this server

Host a copy with our keys and logs.

Server facts

Tools

Questions

How do I install Obsidian Notes?

Does Obsidian Notes need an API key?

What transport does Obsidian Notes use?

When was Obsidian Notes last checked?

Documentation

Install in Claude Desktop

About "Not signed"

MCP tool using obsidian

Goals

Non-goals

Install

Marketplaces

Demo

ask — one prompt, answered from the vault

chat — the same loop, interactive

Fast, because this is a CLI and not a full-fledged TUI

References

Status

Usage

Tests

License

`ask` — one prompt, answered from the vault

`chat` — the same loop, interactive