This MCP server provides semantic search over your Obsidian vault and makes your recent notes accessible to MCP clients. It enables you to search your notes using natural language queries and interact with your vault contents through the Model Context Protocol (MCP).
The server can be run directly using UV:
uv run obsidian-index mcp --vault <VAULT_PATH> --database <DATABASE_PATH> --reindex --watch
Key parameters:
--vault
: Path to your Obsidian vault (can be specified multiple times for multiple vaults)--database
: Where to store the search index--reindex
: Rebuild the search index (recommended for each run currently)--watch
: Automatically update the index when vault contents changeTo integrate with Claude Desktop on MacOS, edit the configuration file:
# Open the config file
nano ~/Library/Application\ Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
For Windows users, edit:
# Config file location
%APPDATA%/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
For an unpublished development version, add to your configuration:
"mcpServers": {
"obsidian-index": {
"command": "uv",
"args": [
"--directory",
"<PATH_TO_PROJECT>",
"run",
"obsidian-index",
"--database",
"<PATH_TO_DATABASE>",
"--vault",
"<PATH_TO_VAULT>",
"--reindex",
"--watch"
]
}
}
For the published version:
"mcpServers": {
"obsidian-index": {
"command": "uvx",
"args": [
"obsidian-index",
"--database",
"<PATH_TO_DATABASE>",
"--vault",
"<PATH_TO_VAULT>",
"--reindex",
"--watch"
]
}
}
The server provides the search-notes
tool for semantic search. When using with Claude, you can:
Recently modified notes in your vaults are exposed as resources with:
obsidian://<VAULT_NAME>/<NOTE_PATH>
text/markdown
This allows Claude to read and reference specific notes directly from your vault.
To add this MCP server to Claude Code, run this command in your terminal:
claude mcp add-json "obsidian-index" '{"command":"uvx","args":["obsidian-index","--database","<PATH_TO_DATABASE>","--vault","<PATH_TO_VAULT>","--reindex","--watch"]}'
See the official Claude Code MCP documentation for more details.
There are two ways to add an MCP server to Cursor. The most common way is to add the server globally in the ~/.cursor/mcp.json
file so that it is available in all of your projects.
If you only need the server in a single project, you can add it to the project instead by creating or adding it to the .cursor/mcp.json
file.
To add a global MCP server go to Cursor Settings > Tools & Integrations and click "New MCP Server".
When you click that button the ~/.cursor/mcp.json
file will be opened and you can add your server like this:
{
"mcpServers": {
"obsidian-index": {
"command": "uvx",
"args": [
"obsidian-index",
"--database",
"<PATH_TO_DATABASE>",
"--vault",
"<PATH_TO_VAULT>",
"--reindex",
"--watch"
]
}
}
}
To add an MCP server to a project you can create a new .cursor/mcp.json
file or add it to the existing one. This will look exactly the same as the global MCP server example above.
Once the server is installed, you might need to head back to Settings > MCP and click the refresh button.
The Cursor agent will then be able to see the available tools the added MCP server has available and will call them when it needs to.
You can also explicitly ask the agent to use the tool by mentioning the tool name and describing what the function does.
To add this MCP server to Claude Desktop:
1. Find your configuration file:
~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
%APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json
~/.config/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
2. Add this to your configuration file:
{
"mcpServers": {
"obsidian-index": {
"command": "uvx",
"args": [
"obsidian-index",
"--database",
"<PATH_TO_DATABASE>",
"--vault",
"<PATH_TO_VAULT>",
"--reindex",
"--watch"
]
}
}
}
3. Restart Claude Desktop for the changes to take effect