Obsidian Index MCP server
About
MCP server providing sementic search over Obsidian vaults
Details
- Author
- tcsavage
- GitHub stars
- 9
- Downloads
- 286
- Categories
- Knowledge Base
Jump to
- Semantic search over indexed Obsidian vault notes.
- Exposes recently modified notes as resources.
- Notes addressed by obsidian:// URL scheme with text/markdown MIME type.
- Supports multiple vaults via repeated --vault flag.
- Watches vault changes and updates index automatically with --watch.
- Reindexes all notes with --reindex flag.
Setting up with Highlight
This MCP is not yet compatible with Highlight’s one-click setup. However, you can still use it with Highlight by following these steps:
- Download and install Highlight from highlightai.com/download
- Navigate to the plugins tab and select "Add Custom Plugin"
-
Configure the plugin with the settings below
Plugin Name
Obsidian Index MCP serverCommand (node, npx, python, etc.)Please refer to the README for specific instructions on how to obtain API keys or other required environment variables.
- Enable "Start Automatically" if you want the plugin to start when Highlight launches
From the repository
Install via PyPI using uv run obsidian-index or uvx obsidian-index. Launch the server with --vault <VAULT_PATH>, --database <DATABASE_PATH>, --reindex, and --watch flags. The server exposes one tool (search-notes) and the recent notes as resources.
Claude Desktop / Cursor
Paste into your MCP client config file to install this server.
{
"mcpServers": {
"obsidian index mcp server": {
"mcp-obsidian-index": {
"command": "uv",
"args": [
"run",
"obsidian-index",
"mcp",
"--vault",
"<VAULT_PATH>",
"--database",
"<DATABASE_PATH>",
"--reindex",
"--watch"
]
}
}
}
}McpServers
{
"mcp-obsidian-index": {
"command": "uv",
"args": [
"run",
"obsidian-index",
"mcp",
"--vault",
"<VAULT_PATH>",
"--database",
"<DATABASE_PATH>",
"--reindex",
"--watch"
]
}
}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.
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