claude-obsidian

Build an Obsidian knowledge base that becomes more useful every time you use it.
Capture sources, create connected notes, retrieve grounded answers, and keep the vault healthy, without giving up ownership of your files.

See the workflow · Quick start · Explore the skills · Installation guide · Windows & WSL

claude-obsidian is a local-first knowledge system for Claude Code and compatible Agent Skills hosts. It turns source material into linked, source-cited Obsidian pages; answers from the evidence already in the vault; and provides explicit workflows for research, retrieval, maintenance, and visual mapping.

Your vault remains a normal directory of Markdown, JSON, and source files. It is not hidden in a plugin cache, locked in a cloud database, or silently uploaded to a model.

Most AI note workflows stop after saving text. claude-obsidian is organized around a repeatable loop: retain the source, ground the claims, connect the knowledge, then put it back to work.

• Capture with context. Bring local sources through a visible inbox and preserve immutable, content-addressed copies before synthesis.
• Ground every important claim. Source and claim ledgers retain authority, freshness, support, contradiction, confidence, and review state.
• Connect what you learn. Build linked pages, indexes, Maps of Content, methodology-aware structures, and Obsidian Canvas views.
• Use the vault again. Query, research, retrieve, lint, and fold what is already known instead of starting every conversation from zero.

See the vault

The output is meant to remain useful with or without an agent: plain Markdown for portability, Obsidian for navigation and visual exploration.

_{Linked knowledge in Graph view · A visual knowledge map in Obsidian Canvas}

Why it feels different

• Local by default. The vault is user-owned and works as ordinary files. Network egress is a separate, explicit decision.
• Sources survive the summary. Notes point back to durable source evidence; unsupported and contradictory claims remain visible.
• Knowledge compounds deliberately. Ingestion, querying, linting, retrieval, research, and rollups share one provenance-aware model.
• Parallel agents cannot race the vault. Workers return drafts. One orchestrator inspects and applies one recoverable transaction.
• Capabilities are stated honestly. Optional tools are detected, maturity is declared, and missing adapters degrade clearly instead of being simulated.

This is not an automatic transcript recorder, a cloud sync service, a factual oracle, or a substitute for backups and source control.

Quick start

The safest first run uses a source checkout and a separate user vault. Every mutating setup command previews its exact operation before it can apply.

1. Get the product

git clone https://github.com/AgriciDaniel/claude-obsidian.git
cd claude-obsidian

The checkout contains the product. It is not your knowledge vault.

2. Initialize a separate vault

export GENERATED_AT="$(date -u +%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ)"
export OPERATION_ID="init-reviewed"

python3 scripts/claude-obsidian.py init "$HOME/Documents/MyKnowledgeVault" \
  --generated-at "$GENERATED_AT" --operation-id "$OPERATION_ID"

Review the JSON plan and copy its approved_plan_sha256, then apply that exact operation:

python3 scripts/claude-obsidian.py init "$HOME/Documents/MyKnowledgeVault" \
  --generated-at "$GENERATED_AT" --operation-id "$OPERATION_ID" \
  --approved-plan-sha256 "<sha256-from-the-plan>" --apply

For an existing Obsidian vault, use the non-destructive adopt workflow described in the installation guide.

3. Start from the vault

Open the new directory in Obsidian, then run Claude Code from that directory with the local plugin:

cd "$HOME/Documents/MyKnowledgeVault"
claude --plugin-dir /absolute/path/to/claude-obsidian

Start with:

/claude-obsidian:wiki

Then place a source in inbox/ and invoke /claude-obsidian:wiki-ingest. Save an answer explicitly with /claude-obsidian:save; ask the vault with /claude-obsidian:wiki-query.

For Codex, OpenCode, Gemini, or ZCode, preview and then apply the portable skill links from the product checkout:

bash scripts/setup-multi-agent.sh --host codex
bash scripts/setup-multi-agent.sh --host codex --apply

Cursor and Windsurf use workspace-local skill discovery. Marketplace setup, every supported host, vault adoption, upgrades, and uninstall steps are covered in the full installation guide.

Current Claude Code releases can also install it from the public marketplace in one step:

/plugin install claude-obsidian --marketplace AgriciDaniel/claude-obsidian

15 skills, one system

The skills are small enough to invoke directly and coordinated enough to share the same evidence, vault-selection, and mutation rules.

Build and use the wiki

Extend the workflow

Reference skills

Claude Code exposes namespaced invocations such as /claude-obsidian:wiki-lint; other hosts use their native Agent Skills invocation. Trigger phrases and exact contracts live in each skills/<name>/SKILL.md.

Trust is part of the architecture

The product never treats a source checkout, plugin cache, or contributor state as the default vault. A vault is selected explicitly, through CLAUDE_OBSIDIAN_VAULT, by the nearest .claude-obsidian.json, or by one unambiguous initialized ancestor. If selection is uncertain, the command exits without writing.

One logical knowledge operation is one recoverable transaction:

1. Read every target and record its expected SHA-256.
2. Let parallel workers return drafts and evidence only.
3. Merge the complete change into one operation bundle.
4. Inspect the bundle, then apply it once.
5. Report the operation ID and exact changed paths.

The core holds one process-lifetime vault lock, journals backups, uses atomic replacement, and restores the prior state if an apply cannot finish. A changed target is a conflict, never a silent overwrite. Git checkpoints, destructive repairs, network egress, and canonical research merges remain explicit operations.

The lock coordinates cooperating local writers. External editors and other devices do not share it; their writes can conflict with an inspected plan or an in-flight operation. Follow the coordination guidance and keep backups, particularly when editing Canvas or Base files through Sync.

Read the transaction contract, provenance contract, and Compound Vault architecture for the machine-facing detail.

Honest capability boundaries

Local reliability tools

Named Save and Ingest operations use workflow inspect and workflow apply to check required catalog navigation, batch history, hot context and evidence records before a reviewed transaction is applied. Storage validity and workflow completeness are reported separately. See workflow acceptance.

Lint reports scan coverage, encoded paths, heading hierarchies, property links, PDF options and supported named Base views. Generated-page value checks are explicitly selected with --frontmatter-policy generated; default presence checks preserve existing vault schemas. Native rendering and complex Base YAML remain separate checks. See native conformance.

Use capacity --vault PATH before large operations. The reviewed capacity compact operation can recover a formatting-heavy legacy ledger without removing records. It refuses content that still exceeds the canonical limit. See capacity and recovery.

Measure an existing BM25 index with bench --queries FILE --vault PATH. Reports include recall, MRR, per-query misses, negative cases, latency and input hashes, with explicit denominators. See offline evaluation. Use the separate offline prompt evaluator to bind synthetic Query/Save cases to instruction hashes and check recorded responses. It performs no model calls and does not substitute for host workflow acceptance. Optional prefixes can use an explicitly selected installed local Ollama model; synthetic prefixes remain the default. See provider controls.

Commands stay /claude-obsidian:*. Upgrading from 2.x is an ordinary update:

claude plugin marketplace update agricidaniel-claude-obsidian
claude plugin update claude-obsidian@agricidaniel-claude-obsidian

Version 3.0.0 alone used the name agricidaniel-obsidian. If you installed it, run the marketplace update, then claude plugin install claude-obsidian@agricidaniel-claude-obsidian. Restart Claude Code after either path. See the namespace migration.

High-risk accepted claims require two independent sources. Unsupported or contradictory evidence stays visible, and a grounded refusal is preferred over an invented citation. Model-based retrieval falls back to deterministic BM25 when the embedding or reranking stage cannot be trusted.

Shape the vault to the way you think

wiki-mode can route new notes using four methodologies without bulk-moving existing knowledge:

Generic is the default when no mode is configured. Switching modes changes how new notes are routed; it does not silently reorganize old ones. See the methodology modes guide.

Operator reference

product repository/                user vault/
├── claude_obsidian/               ├── .gitignore
├── skills/                        ├── .claude-obsidian.json
├── hooks/                         ├── inbox/
├── scripts/                       ├── .raw/
├── templates/vault/               ├── wiki/
├── config/                        ├── .obsidian/
├── assets/                        └── .vault-meta/   # ignored runtime state
└── tests/

python3 scripts/claude-obsidian.py migrate --vault /path/to/vault \
  --generated-at "$GENERATED_AT" --operation-id migrate-reviewed

python3 scripts/claude-obsidian.py transaction recover --vault /path/to/vault

Requirements

• Python 3.11 or newer for the portable core
• Obsidian for the visual vault experience; plain Markdown remains usable without it
• Bash for setup, optional extensions, and shell test suites
• Git only for development, releases, or an explicit knowledge checkpoint
• A current Claude Code release for the Claude Code plugin path: the exec-form args command hook and the compact and fork SessionStart matchers used by hooks/hooks.json need it (see the Claude Code hooks contract). Other supported hosts and the portable CLI have no Claude Code version dependency.

CI exercises Linux and macOS, plus a native-Windows smoke job for the portable surface. On native Windows (including Git Bash), read-only inspection and dry-run commands work; vault writes require WSL and fail closed with an UNSUPPORTED_PLATFORM error otherwise. Approval hashes bind to the reviewing environment, so review inside WSL when the apply will happen there. Platform details, the support matrix, and evidence-bounded WSL hang troubleshooting live in the Windows and WSL guide. The bash setup scripts and shell test suites remain POSIX-only. Optional tools such as Obsidian CLI, Ollama, and defuddle are capability-detected and affect only their dependent workflow.

Development and release

make test

The test target runs every hermetic Python and shell suite, product and capability contracts, skill and hook validation, manifest checks, and package boundaries. CI repeats the suite on supported Linux and macOS/Python combinations and verifies a byte-reproducible release build.

Build and audit locally without publishing:

python3 scripts/claude-obsidian.py release build --output dist/claude-obsidian.zip
python3 scripts/claude-obsidian.py release audit dist/claude-obsidian.zip

No command pushes, tags, publishes, opens issues, or creates releases automatically. See CONTRIBUTING.md, SECURITY.md, and CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md.

Lineage, license, and attribution

The design follows Andrej Karpathy's LLM Wiki pattern and uses kepano/obsidian-skills as the reference substrate for Obsidian Markdown, Bases, and JSON Canvas syntax.

MIT licensed. See ATTRIBUTION.md and CITATION.cff.