Obsidian Skills: let agents edit your vault (2026)

Install kepano/obsidian-skills if your agent already works inside an Obsidian vault. Skip it if you want a finished personal knowledge-management workflow out of the box.

The package is the strongest pick today because it is an app-level skill pack created by Steph Ango (kepano), Obsidian's CEO; the June 28 snapshot shows 38.7K stars, 2.7K forks, 46 commits, and an MIT license. 1 The sharper signal is the scope: it teaches agents how to handle Obsidian Markdown, Bases, JSON Canvas, Obsidian CLI, and Defuddle rather than giving them generic note-taking advice. 1

github.com · GitHub repository

kepano/obsidian-skills

https://github.com/kepano/obsidian-skills

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Verdict

Install today if: you use Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, or another Agent Skills-compatible tool with a real Obsidian vault. The README lists Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, and Hermes support, with Claude Code marketplace installation, npx skills, Codex directory copying, and OpenCode cloning paths documented in the repo. 1

Do not treat it as an Obsidian operating system. The pack gives your agent file-format literacy and, through obsidian-cli, a way to operate a running Obsidian app. It does not know your folder taxonomy, naming rules, tag discipline, review cadence, or private conventions unless you write those instructions yourself. A Chinese user, Bozhou, compared the official skills to a livable but unfinished shell: the structure is there, but the user still has to furnish the workflow. 2

What you get

obsidian-skills contains five skills. obsidian-markdown covers Obsidian-flavored Markdown: wikilinks such as [[Note]], embedded notes and files with ![[...]], callouts, YAML properties, tags, comments, highlights, LaTeX math, Mermaid diagrams, and footnotes. 3 That is the part you want when an agent keeps writing clean Markdown that still misses Obsidian's native linking model.

obsidian-bases teaches .base YAML files. It covers global and view-level filters, nested and/or/not logic, formulas, table/card/list/map views, summary formulas, and common failure modes such as Duration math without .days, missing null checks, and strict YAML quoting. 4 This is the skill to test if you want an agent to turn a natural-language request into a structured reading list, project dashboard, or CRM-style note view.

json-canvas covers the JSON Canvas 1.0 format, including text, file, link, and group nodes; edge anchors; arrow endpoints; labels; color presets; 16-character hex IDs; and validation checks for unique IDs and complete edge references. 5 defuddle adds web-page extraction through the Defuddle CLI, with commands such as defuddle parse <url> --md, --json, output-file saving, and metadata extraction for title, description, and domain. 6

The most consequential piece is obsidian-cli. The skill documents file operations such as read, create, append, search, daily:read, daily:append, tasks, tags, backlinks, and property:set; it also covers plugin-development commands such as plugin:reload, dev:errors, dev:screenshot, dev:dom, dev:console, and JavaScript eval against the running app context. 7 That is powerful because it moves the agent from "edit files on disk" to "interact with the running Obsidian instance." It also increases the blast radius of a bad instruction.

Install path

For a general Agent Skills install, use the repo URL:

npx skills add https://github.com/kepano/obsidian-skills

The README also documents an SSH variant with npx skills add git@github.com:kepano/obsidian-skills.git. 1

For Claude Code marketplace users, start with the marketplace and then install the Obsidian plugin:

/plugin marketplace add kepano/obsidian-skills
/plugin install obsidian@obsidian-skills

The Claude Code path, manual Claude Code copy-to-.claude path, Codex skills/ directory path, and OpenCode clone path are all listed in the repository instructions. 1 OpenCode users should note the repo-level clone pattern: the documented path is git clone https://github.com/kepano/obsidian-skills.git ~/.opencode/skills/obsidian-skills, not a copy of only one subdirectory. 1

First workflows to test

Start with a low-risk Markdown task. Ask the agent to create one note using Obsidian wikilinks, a callout, frontmatter properties, and links to two existing notes. That exercises obsidian-markdown without giving the agent broad vault permissions. 3

Use the obsidian-markdown skill.
Create a note called "Agent Skills inbox" with YAML properties for status, source, and created date.
Link it to [[AI tools]] and [[Obsidian workflows]].
Add one warning callout about reviewing agent-generated links before publishing.

Then test obsidian-bases with a narrow, inspectable view. The skill supports filters, formulas, table/card/list/map views, and summary formulas, so a good first prompt should ask for one view and a small number of fields. 4

Use the obsidian-bases skill.
Create a .base file for notes tagged #agent-skill.
Show title, status, source, and file.mtime.
Sort by file.mtime descending and add a summary count by status.

Use json-canvas only after you have a clear map in mind. The skill can generate .canvas files with text, file, link, and group nodes, plus validated edges and IDs. 5 A useful first request is a small two-cluster map, such as "tools I use" and "workflows they support," rather than a sprawling second brain diagram.

Treat obsidian-cli as the advanced path. It requires Obsidian to be running and supports both normal vault operations and developer commands against the app. 7 If you test it, ask the agent to read before it writes, operate on one named vault, and summarize the exact command it plans to run.

Feedback so far

The strongest user signal is that Obsidian users are discussing this as an alternative to an MCP server, not as another remote service. In a June 27 r/ObsidianMD thread about an Obsidian MCP server, one user wrote: "Obsidian CLI and Claude Code. Your computer is the MCP." 8 That line matches the product logic: Obsidian vaults are local files, so a file-format-aware agent can do a lot before you add another server layer.

The broader social signal is active but uneven. On June 28, X discussion appeared across Chinese, English, and Japanese posts, including VincentLogic's Chinese thread, posts from Divyansh Tiwari and George from prodmgmt.world, and Japanese posts about Hermes and Obsidian Skills. 9 10 11 The feedback that matters most for adoption, though, is the local-file argument. Prasenjit Sarkar summarized it as "no embeddings, no server, no account — just files and a SKILL.md documenting how to manipulate them." 12

A Medium analysis by Kristopher Dunham framed the difference cleanly: "A domain skill makes an agent smarter about a topic. An app skill makes an agent able to do work in software you already use." 13 That is the reason this pack belongs in a daily install queue. It does not make the model smarter about note-taking in the abstract; it tells the model how to touch the formats and commands behind a specific application.

Limitations to check before adoption

The issue tracker had 12 open issues and no closed issues in the research snapshot, including reports about LaTeX escaping in obsidian-cli, WSL stdout behavior, headless Linux support through Xvfb and DISPLAY, and missing documentation for Bases sorting and embedded Bases code blocks. 14 Those are not reasons to avoid the pack entirely, but they are reasons to test it on a copy of your vault before you let it rewrite live notes.

Hermes support is also less explicit than Claude Code, Codex, and OpenCode. The README tags the project for Hermes and follows the open Agent Skills format, while a GitHub issue asked directly about Hermes Agent support. 1 15 If Hermes is your main agent, install expectations should be more cautious than for Claude Code or OpenCode.

The final limitation is workflow fit. The official skills understand .md, .base, .canvas, CLI commands, and clean web extraction; they do not infer which notes are canonical, which folders are archival, or which tags you want retired. 1 Add a small vault policy file before heavy use: allowed folders, forbidden folders, naming convention, tag rules, and a "read before write" rule.

Quick reference

Repository	kepano/obsidian-skills 1
Maintainer	Steph Ango / `kepano`, Obsidian CEO 1
License	MIT 1
Snapshot metrics	38.7K stars · 2.7K forks · 46 commits 1
Included skills	`obsidian-markdown`, `obsidian-bases`, `json-canvas`, `obsidian-cli`, `defuddle` 1
Supported agents	Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, Hermes 1
Main install command	`npx skills add https://github.com/kepano/obsidian-skills` 1
Best first test	Create one linked Markdown note, then one `.base` view, before trying CLI writes. 3 4

Install it if your vault is already a working system and you want your agent to respect Obsidian's native file formats. Skip it if your vault is messy, your platform is one of the rough edges above, or you are looking for a prebuilt second-brain method rather than a set of agent instructions.

Cover image: GitHub OpenGraph card from kepano/obsidian-skills.

Obsidian Skills: let agents edit your vault