Obsidian MCP (MarkusPfundstein)

This MCP turns your Obsidian vault into a queryable knowledge base for Claude. It sits on top of the Local REST API plugin, which means you need that installed and running first. Once wired up, you can ask Claude to search your notes, read specific files, create new ones, or answer questions by pulling context from your vault. The workflow I keep coming back to: asking Claude to summarise scattered notes on a topic, then draft a new note synthesising them. It works because Claude can actually read your markdown, follow wikilinks, and write back into the vault without you copy-pasting. The good part is how invisible it becomes once configured. You just chat, and Claude reaches into your notes when it needs to. The search is regex-based, which is powerful if you know what you're doing and annoying if you don't. There's no fuzzy matching, so you need to be precise or cast a wide net with wildcards. The API key setup is straightforward, but you do need to expose Obsidian's REST API to localhost, which some people won't love from a security perspective. It's fine for a local dev machine, less fine if you're on shared infrastructure. Quirks: the Local REST API plugin itself can be a bit temperamental if Obsidian restarts or if you're switching vaults. You'll get cryptic errors until you realise the plugin needs a manual kick. Also, this is strictly for reading and writing markdown. If you're heavy into Dataview queries or complex plugins, Claude won't understand those constructs. It sees raw markdown, nothing more. Who shouldn't bother: anyone not already using Obsidian, or anyone expecting Claude to magically understand their vault structure without clear filenames and folder hierarchies. This is a power tool for people who already have a well-organised vault and want to query it programmatically. If your notes are a mess, Claude will just surface the mess faster.