Agent skill · writing content · nousresearch
obsidian
Read, search, create, and edit notes in the Obsidian vault.
Why this skill is useful
Provides specific commands and workflows for managing notes in Obsidian that the AI wouldn't reliably generate on its own.
What it needs
About 2k tokens when loaded. Last updated 2026-08-07. 226,679 stars on the source repository.
What this skill does
Obsidian Vault Use this skill for filesystem-first Obsidian vault work: reading notes, listing notes, searching note files, creating notes, appending content, and adding wikilinks. Vault path Use a known or resolved vault path before calling file tools. The documented vault-path convention is the OBSIDIANVAULTPATH environment variable, for example from ${HERMESHOME:-~/.hermes}/.env. If it is unset, use ~/Documents/Obsidian Vault. File tools do not expand shell variables. Do not pass paths containing $OBSIDIANVAULTPATH to readfile, writefile, patch, or searchfiles; resolve the vault path first and pass a concrete absolute path. Vault paths may contain spaces, which is another reason to prefer file tools over shell commands. If the vault path is unknown, terminal is acceptable for resolving OBSIDIANVAULTPATH or checking whether the fallback path exists. Once the path is known, switch back to file tools. Read a note Use readfile with the resolved absolute path to the note. Prefer this over cat because it provides line numbers and pagination. List notes Use searchfiles with target: "files" and the resolved vault path. Prefer this over find or ls. To list all markdown notes, use pattern: ".md" under the vault path. To list a subfolder, search under that subfolder's absolute path. Search Use searchfiles for both filename and content searches. Prefer this over grep, find, or ls. For filenames, use searchfiles with target: "files" and a filename pattern. For note contents, use searchfiles with target: "content", the content regex as pattern, and fileglob: ".md" when you want to restrict matches to markdown notes. Create a note Use writefile with the resolved absolute path and the full markdown content. Prefer this over shell heredocs or echo because it avoids shell quoting issues and returns structured results. Append to a note Prefer a native file-tool workflow when it is not awkward: Read the target note with readfile. …
How to use it
Reference it in AdaL, Claude Code, Cursor or any coding agent — nothing to install:
@skills nousresearch/obsidian