Obsidian Brain

MCP server · by sweir1

Productivity npm v1.7.24

Obsidian MCP server: semantic search, knowledge graph, and vault editing. No plugin required.

View source ↗ Website ↗ Generate config for multiple servers More servers

Install

Pin version registry version 1.7.24

npm
npx -y obsidian-brain

npm
npx -y obsidian-brain@1.7.24

Setup by client

Pick your client — the config below is generated for this server (local stdio). Copy respects the “Pin version” switch above.

claude_desktop_config.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "obsidian-brain": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "obsidian-brain"
      ],
      "env": {
        "VAULT_PATH": "<YOUR_VAULT_PATH>"
      }
    }
  }
}

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "obsidian-brain": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "obsidian-brain@1.7.24"
      ],
      "env": {
        "VAULT_PATH": "<YOUR_VAULT_PATH>"
      }
    }
  }
}

Format verified against the official Claude Desktop docs ↗.

terminal

claude mcp add --env VAULT_PATH=<YOUR_VAULT_PATH> obsidian-brain -- npx -y obsidian-brain

claude mcp add --env VAULT_PATH=<YOUR_VAULT_PATH> obsidian-brain -- npx -y obsidian-brain@1.7.24

Format verified against the official Claude Code docs ↗.

.cursor/mcp.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "obsidian-brain": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "obsidian-brain"
      ],
      "env": {
        "VAULT_PATH": "<YOUR_VAULT_PATH>"
      }
    }
  }
}

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "obsidian-brain": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "obsidian-brain@1.7.24"
      ],
      "env": {
        "VAULT_PATH": "<YOUR_VAULT_PATH>"
      }
    }
  }
}

Format verified against the official Cursor docs ↗.

.vscode/mcp.json

{
  "servers": {
    "obsidian-brain": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "obsidian-brain"
      ],
      "env": {
        "VAULT_PATH": "<YOUR_VAULT_PATH>"
      }
    }
  }
}

{
  "servers": {
    "obsidian-brain": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "obsidian-brain@1.7.24"
      ],
      "env": {
        "VAULT_PATH": "<YOUR_VAULT_PATH>"
      }
    }
  }
}

Format verified against the official VS Code docs ↗.

mcp_config.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "obsidian-brain": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "obsidian-brain"
      ],
      "env": {
        "VAULT_PATH": "<YOUR_VAULT_PATH>"
      }
    }
  }
}

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "obsidian-brain": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "obsidian-brain@1.7.24"
      ],
      "env": {
        "VAULT_PATH": "<YOUR_VAULT_PATH>"
      }
    }
  }
}

Format verified against the official Windsurf docs ↗.

Environment variables

Defined in the server's official registry manifest. Required secrets are shown as <YOUR_…> placeholders in the configs above.

VAULT_PATH required — Absolute path to your Obsidian vault (or any folder of .md files).
DATA_DIR — Where to store the SQLite index + embedding cache. Defaults to $XDG_DATA_HOME/obsidian-brain or ~/.local/share/obsidian-brain.
EMBEDDING_PRESET — Preset name: english (default, bge-small-en-v1.5), english-fast, english-quality, multilingual, multilingual-quality, multilingual-ollama. Ignored when EMBEDDING_MODEL is set.
EMBEDDING_MODEL — Power-user override: any transformers.js checkpoint or Ollama model id. Takes precedence over EMBEDDING_PRESET. Switching auto-reindexes.
EMBEDDING_PROVIDER — Embedding backend. 'transformers' (local, default) or 'ollama' (requires a running Ollama server).
OLLAMA_BASE_URL — Base URL of a local Ollama server. Only used when EMBEDDING_PROVIDER=ollama.
OLLAMA_EMBEDDING_DIM — Override the embedding dimensionality when EMBEDDING_PROVIDER=ollama. If unset, the server probes the model on startup.
OLLAMA_NUM_CTX — Override Ollama's num_ctx for embed requests. Leave UNSET to let obsidian-brain auto-detect via `/api/show`'s `context_length` (e.g. nomic-embed-text=2048, bge-m3=8192, qwen3-embedding:0.6b=32 768). Setting this manually

GitHub

⭐ 12 stars · 最近更新于 91 天前 · Apache-2.0 license

About this server

obsidian brain A standalone Node MCP server that gives Claude (and any other MCP client) semantic search + knowledge graph + vault editing over an Obsidian vault. Runs as one local stdio process — no plugin, no HTTP bridge, no API key, nothing hosted. Your vault content never leaves your machine. 📖…

Summary from the project README — github.com/sweir1/obsidian-brain

Distributed as npm, listed under Productivity. Review our MCP security guide before granting access to real data.

Frequently asked questions

What does the Obsidian Brain MCP server do?

How do I install Obsidian Brain?

Run the install command shown above, then paste the config for your client (Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code or Windsurf) into its MCP settings and restart the client.

Is Obsidian Brain free to use?

The MCP server itself is free to install. The source is public on https://github.com/sweir1/obsidian-brain. Any third-party service it calls may require its own API key and account.

Which clients support Obsidian Brain?

Any MCP-compatible client can use it, including Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code, Windsurf and custom agents.

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