# MCP server for Obsidian

MCP server to interact with Obsidian via the Local REST API community plugin.

<a href="https://glama.ai/mcp/servers/3wko1bhuek"><img width="380" height="200" src="https://glama.ai/mcp/servers/3wko1bhuek/badge" alt="server for Obsidian MCP server" /></a>

## Components

### Tools

The server implements multiple 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: Return the content of a single file in your vault.
- search: Search for documents matching a specified text query across all files in the vault
- patch_content: Insert content into an existing note relative to a heading, block reference, or frontmatter field.
- append_content: Append content to a new or existing file in the vault.
- delete_file: Delete a file or directory from your vault.

### Example prompts

Its good to first instruct Claude to use Obsidian. Then it will always call the tool.

The use prompts like this:
- Get the contents of the last architecture call note and summarize them
- Search for all files where Azure CosmosDb is mentioned and quickly explain to me the context in which it is mentioned
- Summarize the last meeting notes and put them into a new note 'summary meeting.md'. Add an introduction so that I can send it via email.

## Requirements

- Python >= 3.11
- `mcp` Python SDK `>=1.1.0,<2.0.0` (pinned in `pyproject.toml`). `mcp-obsidian` currently registers its tool handlers via the `mcp` 1.x low-level `Server` API (`@app.list_tools()` / `@app.call_tool()`), which was removed in `mcp` 2.0. Installing with an unconstrained `mcp>=2.0` will crash at import with `AttributeError: 'Server' object has no attribute 'list_tools'`.

## Configuration

### Obsidian REST API Key

There are two ways to configure the environment with the Obsidian REST API Key. 

1. Add to server config (preferred)

```json
{
  "mcp-obsidian": {
    "command": "uvx",
    "args": [
      "mcp-obsidian"
    ],
    "env": {
      "OBSIDIAN_API_KEY": "<your_api_key_here>",
      "OBSIDIAN_HOST": "<your_obsidian_host>",
      "OBSIDIAN_PORT": "<your_obsidian_port>"
    }
  }
}
```
Sometimes Claude has issues detecting the location of uv / uvx. You can use `which uvx` to find and paste the full path in above config in such cases.

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

```
OBSIDIAN_API_KEY=your_api_key_here
OBSIDIAN_HOST=your_obsidian_host
OBSIDIAN_PORT=your_obsidian_port
```

Note:
- You can find the API key in the Obsidian plugin config
- Default port is 27124 if not specified
- Default host is 127.0.0.1 if not specified

## Quickstart

### Install

#### Obsidian REST API

You need the Obsidian REST API community plugin running: https://github.com/coddingtonbear/obsidian-local-rest-api

Install and enable it in the settings and copy the api key.

#### Claude Desktop

On MacOS: `~/Library/Application\ Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json`

On Windows: `%APPDATA%/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json`

<details>
  <summary>Development/Unpublished Servers Configuration</summary>
  
```json
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "mcp-obsidian": {
      "command": "uv",
      "args": [
        "--directory",
        "<dir_to>/mcp-obsidian",
        "run",
        "mcp-obsidian"
      ],
      "env": {
        "OBSIDIAN_API_KEY": "<your_api_key_here>",
        "OBSIDIAN_HOST": "<your_obsidian_host>",
        "OBSIDIAN_PORT": "<your_obsidian_port>"
      }
    }
  }
}
```
</details>

<details>
  <summary>Published Servers Configuration</summary>
  
```json
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "mcp-obsidian": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": [
        "mcp-obsidian"
      ],
      "env": {
        "OBSIDIAN_API_KEY": "<YOUR_OBSIDIAN_API_KEY>",
        "OBSIDIAN_HOST": "<your_obsidian_host>",
        "OBSIDIAN_PORT": "<your_obsidian_port>"
      }
    }
  }
}
```
</details>

## Docker

You can run the server in a container instead of installing `uv`/Python locally.

1. Copy `.env.example` to `.env` and fill in your Obsidian REST API key:
```bash
cp .env.example .env
```
By default `OBSIDIAN_HOST` is set to `host.docker.internal`, which resolves to
your host machine from inside the container (works on Linux, Mac and Windows).

2. Build the image:
```bash
docker compose build
```

3. Point your MCP client at the container. Since MCP speaks JSON-RPC over
stdio, the client must run it with stdin attached and no pseudo-TTY — use
`docker compose run --rm -T`, not `docker compose up`:

```json
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "mcp-obsidian": {
      "command": "docker",
      "args": [
        "compose",
        "-f",
        "<dir_to>/mcp-obsidian/docker-compose.yml",
        "run",
        "--rm",
        "-T",
        "mcp-obsidian"
      ]
    }
  }
}
```

You can also run it manually to sanity-check the container starts:
```bash
docker compose run --rm -T mcp-obsidian
```
(it will sit waiting for a JSON-RPC message on stdin; Ctrl+C to exit)

## Development

### Building

To prepare the package for distribution:

1. Sync dependencies and update lockfile:
```bash
uv sync
```

### Debugging

Since MCP servers run over stdio, debugging can be challenging. For the best debugging
experience, we strongly recommend using the [MCP Inspector](https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/inspector).

You can launch the MCP Inspector via [`npm`](https://docs.npmjs.com/downloading-and-installing-node-js-and-npm) with this command:

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

Upon launching, the Inspector will display a URL that you can access in your browser to begin debugging.

You can also watch the server logs with this command:

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