Obsidian Index MCP server

An MCP server that provides a semantic search over an Obsidian vault and exposes recent notes as resources.

Components

Resources

The server exposes recently modified notes in your vaults as resources to MCP clients.

• Notes are addressed by an obsidian://<VAULT_NAME>/<NOTE_PATH> URL scheme
• Notes have the text/markdown media type

Tools

The server implements one tool:

• search-notes: Performs semantic search over indexed notes

Run the server

uv run obsidian-index mcp --vault <VAULT_PATH> --database <DATABASE_PATH> --reindex --watch

• --vault: Path to the Obsidian vault (can be specified multiple times)
• --database: Path to the local database file (will be created if it doesn't exist)
• --reindex: Reindex all notes in the vault (you probably want this every time right now)
• --watch: Watch for changes in the vault and update the index accordingly

Quickstart

Install

Claude Desktop

On MacOS: ~/Library/Application\ Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json On Windows: %APPDATA%/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

<details> <summary>Development/Unpublished Servers Configuration</summary>

"mcpServers": {
  "obsidian-index": {
    "command": "uv",
    "args": [
      "--directory",
      "<PATH_TO_PROJECT>",
      "run",
      "obsidian-index",
      "--database",
      "<PATH_TO_DATABASE>",
      "--vault",
      "<PATH_TO_VAULT>",
      "--reindex",
      "--watch"
    ]
  }
}

</details>

<details> <summary>Published Servers Configuration</summary>

"mcpServers": {
  "obsidian-index": {
    "command": "uvx",
    "args": [
      "obsidian-index",
      "--database",
      "<PATH_TO_DATABASE>",
      "--vault",
      "<PATH_TO_VAULT>",
      "--reindex",
      "--watch"
    ]
  }
}

</details>

Development

Building and Publishing

To prepare the package for distribution:

1. Sync dependencies and update lockfile:

uv sync

2. Build package distributions:

uv build

This will create source and wheel distributions in the dist/ directory.

3. Publish to PyPI:

uv publish

Note: You'll need to set PyPI credentials via environment variables or command flags:

• Token: --token or UV_PUBLISH_TOKEN
• Or username/password: --username/UV_PUBLISH_USERNAME and --password/UV_PUBLISH_PASSWORD

Debugging

Since MCP servers run over stdio, debugging can be challenging. For the best debugging experience, we strongly recommend using the MCP Inspector.

You can launch the MCP Inspector via npm with this command:

npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector uv --directory <PATH_TO_PROJECT> run obsidian-index

Upon launching, the Inspector will display a URL that you can access in your browser to begin debugging.