obsidian

What This Skill Does

The Obsidian skill for OpenClaw provides a robust interface for interacting with your Obsidian vaults. Since Obsidian vaults are simply directories of Markdown files on your disk, this skill bridges the gap between structured note-taking and automated agent workflows. Using obsidian-cli as its engine, it manages vault configuration, allows for deep content searching, creates new notes, and performs safe refactoring like moving or renaming files while maintaining the integrity of internal wikilinks. It acts as an abstraction layer over your file system, ensuring that when you automate tasks, Obsidian's internal indexing remains consistent.

Installation

To install this skill, use the ClawHub command within your terminal or OpenClaw environment: clawhub install openclaw/skills/skills/steipete/obsidian After installation, it is recommended to set a default vault using obsidian-cli set-default "<vault-name>" to ensure the agent knows where to direct its actions by default.

Use Cases

This skill is perfect for users who want to turn their Obsidian vault into an AI-augmented knowledge base. Typical use cases include:

• Automated Research Capture: Direct the agent to read current project notes and append new research summaries found online.
• Knowledge Management: Organize scattered thoughts by having the agent move notes into thematic subfolders while updating all affected links automatically.
• Content Creation: Use the agent to draft articles in Markdown, creating files directly into your vault so they are ready for Obsidian's editor.
• Vault Maintenance: Batch delete obsolete files or search through thousands of notes to find specific context that would be tedious to locate manually.

Example Prompts

1. "Create a new note in my 'Project/Ideas' folder titled 'AI Strategy' with the current summary of our meeting notes."
2. "Search for every note that mentions 'Q3 Planning' and move them into the 'Archive/2023' folder."
3. "Find the note related to the Obsidian plugin development and list the last three mentions of 'API' inside the content."

Tips & Limitations

• Direct Edits: Since vaults are just Markdown files, feel free to modify files using standard filesystem commands if the agent is busy, but use the move command specifically if you need link refactoring.
• Vault Config: The skill relies on ~/Library/Application Support/obsidian/obsidian.json. Ensure your Obsidian app is installed normally so the CLI can resolve your paths correctly.
• URI Limitations: Creating files via the URI handler is convenient but avoid complex paths or dot-folders that Obsidian may ignore for security reasons.
• Safety: Always verify deletions as this skill performs direct disk operations. While move is safe for links, mass deletions cannot be easily undone without a backup or Git version control.