Obsidian CLI Skill

Operate a live Obsidian instance through its official obsidian CLI: note operations, search, tasks, properties, and a plugin/theme development loop with reload, error capture, screenshots, and DOM inspection. Adapted from Steph Ango's MIT-licensed official Obsidian skills.

When to Use

• The task needs the running Obsidian app: opening notes, live search, daily notes, tasks, properties, or vault commands
• Developing or debugging an Obsidian plugin or theme

Route elsewhere when the app is not required: generic vault filesystem work → obsidian; .md authoring semantics → obsidian-markdown; .base files → obsidian-bases; .canvas files → json-canvas.

Prerequisites

• The obsidian CLI installed and on PATH (install docs)
• The Obsidian desktop app installed. It does not have to be running: if it is not, the first CLI command launches it (expect a startup delay and a GUI window — there is no headless mode)

How to Run

Run obsidian <command> via the terminal tool. obsidian help lists every command and is always up to date; full docs live at https://help.obsidian.md/cli.

Syntax rules:

• Parameters take key=value; quote values with spaces: obsidian create name="My Note" content="Hello world"
• Flags are bare words: obsidian create name="My Note" overwrite
• Use \n and \t escapes for multiline content
• File targeting: file=<name> resolves like a wikilink (no path or extension needed); path=<path> is exact from the vault root. Without either, the active file is used.
• Vault targeting (in order): vault=<name> or vault=<id> as the first parameter pins a vault; otherwise, if the terminal's working directory is inside a vault, that vault is used; otherwise the currently active vault.

Quick Reference

obsidian read file="My Note"
obsidian create name="New Note" content="# Hello" template="Template"
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 todo
obsidian tags sort=count counts
obsidian backlinks file="My Note"

Use --copy on any command to copy output to the clipboard, the open flag where supported to open the affected file in Obsidian (files are not opened by default), and total on list commands to get a count.

Procedure

Plugin/theme develop-test cycle — after each code change:

1. Reload the plugin: obsidian plugin:reload id=my-plugin
2. Check for errors, fix, and repeat from step 1 if any appear: obsidian dev:errors
3. Verify visually: obsidian dev:screenshot path=screenshot.png or obsidian dev:dom selector=".workspace-leaf" text
4. Check console output: obsidian dev:console level=error

Additional developer commands:

obsidian eval code="app.vault.getFiles().length"          # run JS in app
obsidian dev:css selector=".workspace-leaf" prop=background-color
obsidian dev:mobile on                                    # mobile emulation

obsidian help lists further developer commands, including CDP and debugger controls.

Pitfalls

• The first command launches Obsidian when it is not already running — on a headless machine (no display) the CLI cannot work at all.
• Multi-vault setups: without vault=, the vault is inferred from the working directory or falls back to the active vault — pin it explicitly in scripts.
• file= resolves wikilink-style and may match an unexpected note; use path= when exactness matters.
• Prefer native file tools (read_file, write_file, patch) for bulk file edits — the CLI is for app-side state (open notes, live search, plugin reloads), not mass file rewriting.

Verification

Check the command's stdout and exit code in terminal. For state-changing operations, confirm the result: re-read the note (obsidian read or read_file), or take a screenshot with obsidian dev:screenshot for UI-facing changes. For plugin work, obsidian dev:errors must come back clean after a reload.

References

• Obsidian CLI docs
• Source: kepano/obsidian-skills by Steph Ango, MIT — full license in THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md