Obsidian Vault Skill

Manage Obsidian vaults directly via filesystem tools. No external CLI required — uses built-in read, write, list, and edit tools to work with vault files.

Vault Structure

An Obsidian vault is a directory containing markdown files and a .obsidian/ config folder:

MyVault/
├── .obsidian/           # Obsidian config (DO NOT modify unless asked)
│   ├── app.json         # App settings
│   ├── appearance.json  # Theme settings
│   ├── community-plugins.json  # Installed plugin IDs
│   └── plugins/         # Plugin configs
├── Daily Notes/         # Common daily notes folder
├── Templates/           # Common templates folder
├── Attachments/         # Images, PDFs, etc.
├── Notes/               # User's notes
└── *.md                 # Root-level notes

Identify a vault: A directory is a vault if it contains .obsidian/ subdirectory.

Frontmatter (Properties)

Notes use YAML frontmatter between --- delimiters at the top of the file:

---
title: Meeting Notes
date: 2026-02-26
tags:
  - meeting
  - project-alpha
status: draft
aliases:
  - Alpha Meeting
---

# Meeting Notes

Content starts here...

Read frontmatter

Read the file and parse everything between the first --- pair.

Update frontmatter

Use the edit tool to replace frontmatter fields. Preserve existing fields — only change what's requested.

Add frontmatter to a file without one

Prepend ---\n<fields>\n---\n\n before existing content.

Tags

Tags appear in two places:

1. •Frontmatter tags — tags: [meeting, project] in YAML
2. •Inline tags — #tag-name anywhere in the body text (NOT inside code blocks)

Nested tags use /: #project/alpha, #status/in-progress

Find all tags in vault

Search for #[\w/-]+ pattern across all .md files, plus parse tags: from frontmatter.

Find files with a specific tag

Search for both #tag-name in body text AND tag-name in frontmatter tags arrays.

Wikilinks

Obsidian links use double-bracket syntax:

Find backlinks

To find all files linking TO MyNote.md, search all .md files for [[MyNote]] or [[MyNote| or [[MyNote#.

Find broken links

Extract all [[target]] references, then check if target.md exists in the vault.

Tasks

Obsidian uses markdown checkboxes with optional metadata:

- [ ] Incomplete task
- [x] Completed task
- [ ] Task with due date [due:: 2026-03-01]
- [ ] Task with priority [priority:: high]
- [ ] #project/alpha Review the design doc

Find all tasks

Search for lines matching - \[[ x]\] across all .md files.

Find incomplete tasks

Search for - \[ \] (with space between brackets).

Complete a task

Edit the file, replacing - [ ] with - [x] on the target line.

Find overdue tasks

Search for \[due:: (\d{4}-\d{2}-\d{2})\] and compare dates.

Daily Notes

Daily notes follow a date-based naming convention. Common patterns:

Detect daily notes folder

Check .obsidian/daily-notes.json for folder and format settings. If not configured, check for common folder names: Daily Notes, Journal, Dailies.

Create today's daily note

---
date: 2026-02-26
tags:
  - daily
---

# 2026-02-26

## Tasks

- [ ]

## Notes

List recent daily notes

List files in the daily notes folder, sort by filename (date) descending.

Templates

Templates live in a configurable folder (check .obsidian/templates.json for folder). Common locations: Templates/, _templates/.

Apply a template

1. •Read the template file
2. •Replace template variables:
   • •{{date}} or {{date:YYYY-MM-DD}} → current date
   • •{{time}} or {{time:HH:mm}} → current time
   • •{{title}} → note filename without .md
3. •Write as the new note content

Search

Full-text search

Use the shell tool with grep/ripgrep to search vault content:

# Search all markdown files for a term
grep -rl "search term" /path/to/vault --include="*.md"

# Search with context
grep -rn "search term" /path/to/vault --include="*.md" -C 2

Or use the filesystem list tool to enumerate files, then read and filter.

Search by property

Parse frontmatter from each file and filter by property values.

Common Operations

Create a new note

Write a new .md file with frontmatter:

---
title: Note Title
date: 2026-02-26
tags: []
---

# Note Title

Content here.

Move/rename a note

1. •Read the old file
2. •Write to the new path
3. •Delete the old file
4. •Update backlinks: Search all .md files for [[OldName]] and replace with [[NewName]]

List all notes

List all *.md files in the vault, excluding .obsidian/ and .trash/.

Vault statistics

• •Count .md files (total notes)
• •Extract and count unique tags
• •Count [[ references (total links)
• •Count - [ ] lines (open tasks)
• •Count - [x] lines (completed tasks)

Obsidian Config Files

These live in .obsidian/ — read but don't modify unless explicitly asked:

Tips

• •Always preserve existing frontmatter fields when editing — only change what's asked
• •Wikilinks are case-insensitive for matching but preserve original case
• •Files in .trash/ are soft-deleted — check there before declaring something missing
• •Attachments (images, PDFs) are typically in Attachments/ or alongside the note
• •Obsidian ignores dotfiles and node_modules/ — don't create notes there
• •When creating notes, match the vault's existing naming convention (kebab-case, Title Case, etc.)
• •Canvas files (.canvas) are JSON — read with filesystem tools, parse as JSON