📌Overview

Purpose: The MCP server for Obsidian enables users to interact with their Obsidian vault through a Local REST API, streamlining access to notes and file management.

Overview: This server acts as a bridge between the MCP platform and Obsidian, providing several tools to enhance productivity by allowing users to easily manipulate and retrieve data from their Obsidian vault.

Key Features:

• File Management Tools: Includes functionalities like listing all files and directories in the vault, retrieving specific file contents, and appending or patching content in notes, facilitating efficient file organization and access.

• Search Capability: Users can perform text queries across all documents, allowing for quick retrieval of information and better contextual understanding of terms or topics mentioned in the notes.

• User-Friendly Configuration: Easy setup via server configurations or environment variables ensures a smooth integration with the existing Obsidian setup for both new and experienced users.

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MCP Server for Obsidian

The MCP server allows interaction with Obsidian via the Local REST API community plugin.

Components

Tools

The server implements several tools to interact with Obsidian:

• list_files_in_vault: Lists all files and directories in the root directory of your Obsidian vault.
• list_files_in_dir: Lists all files and directories in a specific Obsidian directory.
• get_file_contents: Returns the content of a single file in your vault.
• search: Searches for documents matching a specified text query across all files in the vault.
• patch_content: Inserts content into an existing note relative to a heading, block reference, or frontmatter field.
• append_content: Appends content to a new or existing file in the vault.

Example Prompts

• Get the contents of the last architecture call note and summarize them.
• Search for all files where Azure CosmosDb is mentioned and explain the context in which it is mentioned.
• Summarize the last meeting notes and create a new note 'summary meeting.md' with an introduction for email sharing.

Configuration

Obsidian REST API Key

You can configure the environment with the Obsidian REST API Key in two ways:

1. Add to server config (preferred):

   {
     "mcp-obsidian": {
       "command": "uvx",
       "args": [
         "mcp-obsidian"
       ],
       "env": {
         "OBSIDIAN_API_KEY":"<your_api_key_here>"
       }
     }
   }
   

2. Create a .env file in the working directory with the following:

   OBSIDIAN_API_KEY=your_api_key_here
   

Quickstart

Install

1. Obsidian REST API: Install the Obsidian REST API community plugin and copy the API key from the settings.

2. Claude Desktop Configuration:

   • On MacOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
   • On Windows: %APPDATA%/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

Server Configuration

Development/Unpublished Servers

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "mcp-obsidian": {
      "command": "uv",
      "args": [
        "--directory",
        "<dir_to>/mcp-obsidian",
        "run",
        "mcp-obsidian"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Published Servers

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "mcp-obsidian": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": [
        "mcp-obsidian"
      ],
      "env": {
        "OBSIDIAN_API_KEY": "<YOUR_OBSIDIAN_API_KEY>"
      }
    }
  }
}

Development

Building

To prepare the package for distribution:

uv sync

Debugging

For effective debugging, use the MCP Inspector:

npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector uv --directory /path/to/mcp-obsidian run mcp-obsidian

You can also monitor server logs:

tail -n 20 -f ~/Library/Logs/Claude/mcp-server-mcp-obsidian.log