seekstone

<p align="center"> <picture> <source media="(prefers-color-scheme: dark)" srcset="brand/seekstone-wordmark-dark.svg" /> <img src="brand/seekstone-wordmark-light.svg" width="320" alt="Seekstone" /> </picture> </p>

<p align="center"><strong>The MCP server that connects Claude to your Obsidian vault.</strong></p> <p align="center"><em>Filesystem-direct · No plugins · No context waste · macOS · Linux · Windows</em></p>

<p align="center"> <a href="https://www.npmjs.com/package/obsidian-mcp-seekstone"><img src="https://img.shields.io/npm/v/obsidian-mcp-seekstone?color=cb3837&logo=npm&label=obsidian-mcp-seekstone" alt="npm" /></a> <a href="https://www.npmjs.com/package/seekstone"><img src="https://img.shields.io/npm/v/seekstone?color=cb3837&logo=npm&label=seekstone" alt="npm (seekstone)" /></a> <a href="https://github.com/shaqmughal/seekstone/actions/workflows/ci.yml"><img src="https://github.com/shaqmughal/seekstone/actions/workflows/ci.yml/badge.svg" alt="CI" /></a> <a href="LICENSE"><img src="https://img.shields.io/badge/License-MIT-yellow.svg" alt="License: MIT" /></a> <img src="https://img.shields.io/badge/Node.js-%E2%89%A522-339933?logo=node.js&logoColor=white" alt="Node.js ≥ 22" /> </p>

---

What is Seekstone?

Seekstone is an Obsidian MCP server — it gives Claude (and any Model Context Protocol client) direct read and write access to your Obsidian vault. No Obsidian app needs to be open, no plugins are required, and nothing leaves your machine.

It reads your vault directly from disk rather than routing through the Obsidian Local REST API plugin. The practical difference: a search that returns ~1.75 MB and ~459,000 tokens via the REST plugin returns ~3 KB and ~800 tokens via Seekstone — a ~575× reduction. Claude can search and read your entire note library without burning most of its context window on a single tool call.

Two npm names, one server — published under both for discoverability:

Package	Install command
obsidian-mcp-seekstone	npx -y obsidian-mcp-seekstone
seekstone	npx -y seekstone

---

Install

Claude Desktop — add to claude_desktop_config.json (Settings → Developer → Edit Config):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "seekstone": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "obsidian-mcp-seekstone"],
      "env": { "SEEKSTONE_VAULT": "/absolute/path/to/your/vault" }
    }
  }
}

Claude Code:

claude mcp add seekstone --env SEEKSTONE_VAULT=/absolute/path/to/your/vault -- npx -y obsidian-mcp-seekstone

Restart the client. On startup Seekstone walks the vault, builds an in-memory full-text index (a few seconds for thousands of notes), and keeps it live as you edit. The eight tools below are then available to Claude.

Requires Node.js ≥ 22.

Guided setup

Prefer not to hand-edit JSON? seekstone init validates your vault and either prints the config block or patches the Claude Desktop config in place (with a backup, leaving your other MCP servers untouched):

# Print the config block to copy-paste
npx -y obsidian-mcp-seekstone init --vault "/absolute/path/to/your/vault"

# Patch the Claude Desktop config directly
npx -y obsidian-mcp-seekstone init --vault "/absolute/path/to/your/vault" --write

# Print the Claude Code command instead
npx -y obsidian-mcp-seekstone init --vault "/absolute/path/to/your/vault" --client code

---

What can Claude do with your vault?

Once Seekstone is connected, you can ask Claude things like:

• "Search my notes for everything about [topic] and give me a summary" — uses search, returns ranked excerpts, not full files
• "Find all notes tagged #project and list their titles" — uses list_notes with a tag filter
• "Read my note on [topic] and suggest improvements" — uses read_note
• "Create a new meeting note for today with a standard template" — uses create_note
• "Add a summary section to the bottom of [note]" — uses append_note, never touches frontmatter
• "Move all notes in /inbox to /archive/[year]" — uses move_note
• "Update the status field in this note's frontmatter to 'done'" — uses patch_frontmatter, preserves key order and quote style
• "Delete the scratch note at [path]" — uses delete_note

Claude never sees your full vault at once — it searches and reads selectively, so even large vaults (10k+ notes) stay within context budget.

---

Tools

Tool	Description
search	Full-text search. Returns ranked ~200-char excerpts, not full notes. Fuzzy, prefix, and phrase queries.
read_note	Read the full content of a note by vault-relative path.
list_notes	List notes, optionally filtered by folder prefix or tag.
create_note	Create a note (optional frontmatter + body); parent directories are created automatically.
delete_note	Permanently delete a note. Irreversible.
move_note	Move or rename a note; destination directories are created automatically.
append_note	Append text to a note body without touching frontmatter.
patch_frontmatter	Set, update, or delete frontmatter keys without reordering existing keys or changing quote style.

---

Configuration

Variable	Required	Description
SEEKSTONE_VAULT	Yes	Absolute path to your Obsidian vault.
SEEKSTONE_LOG_LEVEL	No	error | warn | info (default) | debug.
SEEKSTONE_LOG_FILE	No	Absolute path; when set, JSON-line logs are appended here (size-rotated).
SEEKSTONE_WATCH_POLL	No	Set to 1 to stat-poll for changes instead of native OS events — slower but reliable on network drives, WSL, and some containers.

---

How it works

Seekstone walks the vault with fast-glob, parses each note's frontmatter (byte-aware, so writes can prove the frontmatter region is byte-identical pre- and post-write), and builds a MiniSearch full-text index in memory. Search returns short ranked excerpts rather than whole notes — that excerpt-not-document design is where the context-tax win comes from. A cross-platform file watcher (chokidar) keeps the index current as you edit in Obsidian.

Writes are conservative by design: append_note never touches frontmatter, and patch_frontmatter edits the YAML document in place rather than re-serializing it, preserving key order, quote style, and comments.

---

Security & privacy

Seekstone reads — and, via the write tools, modifies — files under SEEKSTONE_VAULT on your local disk. It makes no network calls and sends no telemetry. Logs are metadata-only by default (note contents only appear at debug level). Nothing is written outside the vault except an optional log file you configure.

---

Frequently asked questions

Does the Obsidian app need to be running? No. Seekstone reads the vault folder directly from disk. Obsidian can be open or closed.

Do I need the Local REST API plugin? No. Seekstone bypasses it entirely — that's the source of the 575× payload reduction. No plugins are required.

Which AI clients does it support? Any client that supports the Model Context Protocol (MCP) over stdio — Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, Continue, and others.

Is it safe to use on my vault? Seekstone never modifies files except when you explicitly invoke a write tool (create_note, append_note, patch_frontmatter, move_note, delete_note). It makes no network requests. The vault path is sandboxed — no tool can read or write outside it.

Does it work on Windows? Yes. Seekstone is tested on macOS, Linux, and Windows in CI on every commit.

What Obsidian vault sizes does it handle? Seekstone has been profiled against vaults with thousands of notes. The in-memory index is small (a few MB for a typical vault) and starts in a few seconds.

---

Contributing & development

Contributions welcome. See CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines, or jump straight in:

npm install                                          # install all workspace deps
npm test                                             # run all tests
npm run lint                                         # biome check
npm run build -w seekstone                           # tsup → dist/

npx vitest run packages/server/src/tools/search.test.ts  # single test file
npx vitest run -t 'parses a typical frontmatter'         # single test by name
npx tsc -p packages/server/tsconfig.json --noEmit        # typecheck

Repository layout

Package	Purpose
packages/server	The published seekstone MCP server (8 tools, stdio, MiniSearch index, chokidar watcher).
packages/core	Shared vault primitives — walk, frontmatter parser, link/tag extractor, percentiles. Bundled into the server build.
packages/harness	Profiler + benchmark + write-safety harness (REST vs filesystem) that produced the payload numbers above. Dev-only; not published.

The server has a real build (tsup → dist/) and is published to npm. The harness is run from source via tsx. Releases are automated — see docs/RELEASING.md.

The measurement harness

The harness exists to reproduce the benchmark numbers that motivated the filesystem-direct design. It needs the Local REST API plugin for the rest backend.

export SEEKSTONE_VAULT="/absolute/path/to/your/vault"

npx tsx packages/harness/src/cli.ts profile --vault "$SEEKSTONE_VAULT"
npx tsx packages/harness/src/cli.ts bench \
  --queries packages/harness/queries/default.json \
  --stats reports/vault-stats.json
npx tsx packages/harness/src/cli.ts safety --vault "$SEEKSTONE_VAULT"

Harness env vars: SEEKSTONE_REST_API_KEY (from the Local REST API plugin) and SEEKSTONE_REST_URL (defaults to https://127.0.0.1:27124).

---

License

MIT © Shaq Mughal