The Obsidian MCP server for Claude — search and edit your vault without burning context.
Filesystem-direct · No plugins · No Obsidian app required · macOS · Linux · Windows
Seekstone is an Obsidian MCP server — it gives Claude (and any Model Context Protocol client) direct read and write access to your Obsidian vault. No Obsidian app needs to be open, no plugins are required, and nothing leaves your machine.
It reads your vault directly from disk rather than routing through the Obsidian Local REST API plugin. The practical difference: a search that returns ~1.75 MB and ~459,000 tokens via the REST plugin returns ~3 KB and ~800 tokens via Seekstone — a ~575× reduction. Claude can search and read your entire note library without burning most of its context window on a single tool call.
Two npm names, one server — published under both for discoverability:
| Package | Install command |
|---|---|
obsidian-mcp-seekstone |
npx -y obsidian-mcp-seekstone |
seekstone |
npx -y seekstone |
Most Obsidian MCP servers proxy the Obsidian Local REST API plugin, which returns full note content for every search hit. On a popular query that's megabytes of text your LLM has to process — most of it irrelevant.
Seekstone returns ~200-character ranked excerpts instead. We benchmarked three approaches on a real vault, 20 runs each:
Search payload — bytes returned per query (lower is better)
| Query | Seekstone | REST-proxy servers¹ | Multiplier |
|---|---|---|---|
| Single common term | 3.2 KB | 802 KB | 250× |
| Two-word search | 3.2 KB | 1.29 MB | 413× |
| Common phrase | 3.1 KB | 2.45 MB | 811× |
| Rare term | 3.2 KB | 336 KB | 105× |
Search latency — warm median (lower is better)
| Seekstone | mcpvault² | REST-proxy servers¹ | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Range | 1.5–3.9 ms | 189–225 ms | 40–61 ms |
¹ REST-proxy = mcp-obsidian (3,800 ★), obsidian-mcp-server, and others that route through the Local REST API plugin. Benchmarked against the plugin directly (best-case for the REST approach — no wrapper overhead).
² mcpvault is also filesystem-direct but spawns a subprocess per session, adding a stdio round-trip per query.
The harness and methodology are open source — run it against your own vault.
Choose the method that suits you best.
- Download
seekstone.mcpbfrom GitHub Releases - Open it with Claude Desktop — double-click in Finder, or right-click → Open With → Claude Desktop
- Pick your Obsidian vault folder when prompted
You'll know it worked when seekstone appears in Claude's toolbar. No JSON editing, no terminal, no Node.js required.
Run the setup helper and let Seekstone find your vault automatically:
npx -y obsidian-mcp-seekstone initSeekstone reads Obsidian's own vault registry to detect your vault, validates it, and either prints the config block to paste or patches Claude Desktop directly:
# Auto-detect vault, print config to paste
npx -y obsidian-mcp-seekstone init
# Auto-detect vault, patch Claude Desktop in place (with backup)
npx -y obsidian-mcp-seekstone init --write
# Specify vault explicitly if you have multiple
npx -y obsidian-mcp-seekstone init --vault "/path/to/vault"
# Auto-configure Claude Code in one step (auto-detects vault, runs claude mcp add)
npx -y obsidian-mcp-seekstone init --client code --write
# Or just print the Claude Code command without running it
npx -y obsidian-mcp-seekstone init --client codeAdd to claude_desktop_config.json (Settings → Developer → Edit Config):
{
"mcpServers": {
"seekstone": {
"command": "npx",
"args": ["-y", "obsidian-mcp-seekstone"],
"env": { "SEEKSTONE_VAULT": "/absolute/path/to/your/vault" }
}
}
}Auto-detects your vault and configures Claude Code in one command:
npx -y obsidian-mcp-seekstone init --client code --writeOr manually, if you prefer to specify the vault path explicitly:
claude mcp add seekstone --env SEEKSTONE_VAULT=/absolute/path/to/your/vault -- npx -y obsidian-mcp-seekstoneAfter installing, restart the client. On startup Seekstone walks the vault, builds an in-memory full-text index (a few seconds for thousands of notes), and keeps it live as you edit. The eight tools below are then available to Claude.
Requires Node.js ≥ 22 for the CLI options. The one-click .mcpb bundle has no external requirements.
Once Seekstone is connected, you can ask Claude things like:
- "Search my notes for everything about [topic] and give me a summary" — uses
search, returns ranked excerpts, not full files - "Find all notes tagged #project and list their titles" — uses
list_noteswith a tag filter - "Read my note on [topic] and suggest improvements" — uses
read_note - "Create a new meeting note for today with a standard template" — uses
create_note - "Add a summary section to the bottom of [note]" — uses
append_note, never touches frontmatter - "Move all notes in /inbox to /archive/[year]" — uses
move_note - "Update the status field in this note's frontmatter to 'done'" — uses
patch_frontmatter, preserves key order and quote style - "Delete the scratch note at [path]" — uses
delete_note
Claude never sees your full vault at once — it searches and reads selectively, so even large vaults (10k+ notes) stay within context budget.
| Tool | Description |
|---|---|
search |
Full-text search. Returns ranked ~200-char excerpts, not full notes. Fuzzy, prefix, and phrase queries. |
read_note |
Read the full content of a note by vault-relative path. |
list_notes |
List notes, optionally filtered by folder prefix or tag. |
create_note |
Create a note (optional frontmatter + body); parent directories are created automatically. |
delete_note |
Permanently delete a note. Irreversible. |
move_note |
Move or rename a note; destination directories are created automatically. |
append_note |
Append text to a note body without touching frontmatter. |
patch_frontmatter |
Set, update, or delete frontmatter keys without reordering existing keys or changing quote style. |
| Variable | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|
SEEKSTONE_VAULT |
Yes | Absolute path to your Obsidian vault. |
SEEKSTONE_LOG_LEVEL |
No | error | warn | info (default) | debug. |
SEEKSTONE_LOG_FILE |
No | Absolute path; when set, JSON-line logs are appended here (size-rotated). |
SEEKSTONE_WATCH_POLL |
No | Set to 1 to stat-poll for changes instead of native OS events — slower but reliable on network drives, WSL, and some containers. |
Seekstone walks the vault with fast-glob, parses each note's frontmatter (byte-aware, so writes can prove the frontmatter region is byte-identical pre- and post-write), and builds a MiniSearch full-text index in memory. Search returns short ranked excerpts rather than whole notes — that excerpt-not-document design is where the context-tax win comes from. A cross-platform file watcher (chokidar) keeps the index current as you edit in Obsidian.
Writes are conservative by design: append_note never touches frontmatter, and patch_frontmatter edits the YAML document in place rather than re-serializing it, preserving key order, quote style, and comments.
Seekstone reads — and, via the write tools, modifies — files under SEEKSTONE_VAULT on your local disk. It makes no network calls and sends no telemetry. Logs are metadata-only by default (note contents only appear at debug level). Nothing is written outside the vault except an optional log file you configure.
Does the Obsidian app need to be running? No. Seekstone reads the vault folder directly from disk. Obsidian can be open or closed.
Do I need the Local REST API plugin? No. Seekstone bypasses it entirely — that's the source of the 575× payload reduction. No plugins are required.
Which AI clients does it support? Any client that supports the Model Context Protocol (MCP) over stdio — Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, Continue, and others.
Is it safe to use on my vault?
Seekstone never modifies files except when you explicitly invoke a write tool (create_note, append_note, patch_frontmatter, move_note, delete_note). It makes no network requests. The vault path is sandboxed — no tool can read or write outside it.
Does it work on Windows? Yes. Seekstone is tested on macOS, Linux, and Windows in CI on every commit.
What Obsidian vault sizes does it handle? Seekstone has been profiled against vaults with thousands of notes. The in-memory index is small (a few MB for a typical vault) and starts in a few seconds.
How does seekstone init find my vault automatically?
It reads Obsidian's own vault registry (obsidian.json) — the same file Obsidian uses to track your known vaults. If you have one vault, it's selected automatically. If you have multiple, it lists them and asks you to pick with --vault.
What is the .mcpb file?
An MCP Bundle — a self-contained zip with the server and its manifest. To install: double-click in Finder (or right-click → Open With → Claude Desktop), pick your vault, and you're done. No terminal or Node.js required.
Contributions welcome. See CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines, or jump straight in:
npm install # install all workspace deps
npm test # run all tests
npm run lint # biome check
npm run build -w seekstone # tsup → dist/
npm run build:mcpb # build seekstone.mcpb bundle
npx vitest run packages/server/src/tools/search.test.ts # single test file
npx vitest run -t 'parses a typical frontmatter' # single test by name
npx tsc -p packages/server/tsconfig.json --noEmit # typecheck| Package | Purpose |
|---|---|
packages/server |
The published seekstone MCP server (8 tools, stdio, MiniSearch index, chokidar watcher). |
packages/core |
Shared vault primitives — walk, frontmatter parser, link/tag extractor, percentiles. Bundled into the server build. |
packages/harness |
Profiler + benchmark + write-safety harness (REST vs filesystem) that produced the payload numbers above. Dev-only; not published. |
The server has a real build (tsup → dist/) and is published to npm. The harness is run from source via tsx. Releases are automated — see docs/RELEASING.md.
The harness exists to reproduce the benchmark numbers that motivated the filesystem-direct design. It needs the Local REST API plugin for the rest backend.
export SEEKSTONE_VAULT="/absolute/path/to/your/vault"
npx tsx packages/harness/src/cli.ts profile --vault "$SEEKSTONE_VAULT"
npx tsx packages/harness/src/cli.ts bench \
--queries packages/harness/queries/default.json \
--stats reports/vault-stats.json
npx tsx packages/harness/src/cli.ts safety --vault "$SEEKSTONE_VAULT"Harness env vars: SEEKSTONE_REST_API_KEY (from the Local REST API plugin) and SEEKSTONE_REST_URL (defaults to https://127.0.0.1:27124).
Seekstone is free and open source. If it saves you context (and money), you can buy me a coffee.
MIT © Shaq Mughal