Obsidian MCP Server

Features

Model Context Protocol server for a single Obsidian vault, built for the Karpathy LLM Wiki flow.

• Sandboxed: every path is resolved inside VAULT_PATH; traversal outside the vault is rejected.
• raw/ read-only: write_file / append_file are denied anywhere under raw/, enforcing the immutable-sources rule in the vault's AGENTS.md. This closes the gap the generic @modelcontextprotocol/server-filesystem leaves open (it grants write everywhere).
• Local stdio server: runs on your machine, no network, minimal tokens.

| | This Server | Official filesystem MCP | |---|---|---| | Scope | one vault (VAULT_PATH) | any allowed dirs | | raw/ protection | enforced (read-only) | none | | Tools | read/write/append/list/search | full FS | | Transport | stdio | stdio |

Tools

| Tool | Args | Notes | |------|------|-------| | read_file | path | UTF-8, vault-relative | | write_file | path, content | denied under raw/; makes parent dirs | | append_file | path, content | denied under raw/ (e.g. wiki/log.md) | | list_dir | path? | dirs get trailing /; default = vault root | | search | query, path?, max_results? | recursive regex; skips node_modules, .git, .obsidian, binaries |

Prerequisites

• Node.js >= 18

Setup

cd "path/to/mcps/Obsidian"
cp .env.example .env          # then edit VAULT_PATH to your vault's absolute path
./setup-mcp.sh                # installs deps, registers with Claude Code, runs tests

Or manually:

npm install
npm test
npm start                     # runs the server on stdio

Configuration

.env:

VAULT_PATH=/absolute/path/to/your/vault

Use with Claude Desktop

Add to ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "obsidian": {
      "command": "/absolute/path/to/mcps/Obsidian/start-mcp.sh"
    }
  }
}

Restart Claude Desktop. VAULT_PATH comes from this directory's .env, so no path is duplicated in the Desktop config. Because raw/ is read-only at the server level, Desktop cannot mutate your sources even though it's not governed by Claude Code's .claude/settings.json.

Use with Claude Code

setup-mcp.sh registers it via claude mcp add. Note: Claude Code already has native file tools scoped to the working directory, so this server is primarily for Claude Desktop (which otherwise has no vault access) and for enforcing raw/ immutability everywhere.