Obsidian MCP: Four Ways to Connect Claude and Claude Code to Your Vault, and What Each Lets Claude See

An Obsidian MCP server is a small program that exposes your vault to an AI client such as Claude Desktop, Claude Code or Cursor through the Model Context Protocol, so the model can read, search and write notes without you pasting them. There is no official one from Obsidian; the community servers all go through the Local REST API plugin or read the vault folder directly. Three of the four ways to connect Claude hand it your vault as files. The fourth hands it the vault's structure.

Files are enough for editing: Claude opens a note, rewrites a section, adds a [[wikilink]]. They are not enough for the question a long-lived vault raises, which is what it holds, how its topics connect and where it is thin. The comparison below runs on that axis: what Claude can see through each route, the setup for the MCP routes, and one session in which Claude reads the vault as a knowledge graph and proposes the note that fills a gap.

Connect Claude to Your Vault

https://mcp.infranodus.com

https://mcp.infranodus.com

claude mcp add infranodus -s user --transport http https://mcp.infranodus.com/mcp

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "infranodus": {
      "url": "https://mcp.infranodus.com"
    }
  }
}

codex mcp add infranodus --url https://mcp.infranodus.com
codex mcp login infranodus

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "infranodus": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "infranodus-mcp-server"],
      "env": {
        "INFRANODUS_API_KEY": "your-api-key"
      }
    }
  }
}

/plugin marketplace add infranodus/skills
/plugin install infranodus@infranodus-skills

npx skills add infranodus/skills --skill infranodus -g -a claude-code -y

$skill-installer install the infranodus skill from https://github.com/infranodus/skills

npx skills add infranodus/skills --skill infranodus -g -a codex -y

npx skills add infranodus/skills --skill infranodus -g

Use the InfraNodus skill on this vault folder: build the knowledge graph, show me the main topics and the most central concepts, then name the biggest gap between two clusters and the note that would bridge it.

What Is an Obsidian MCP Server?

An Obsidian MCP server is a bridge between your vault and an MCP client. The client (Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor or Cline) sends tool calls such as "search notes for X" or "append this to today's note"; the server runs them against the vault on your disk and returns the result. Three families exist: plugins that run the server inside Obsidian, bridges that reach Obsidian through the Local REST API plugin, and servers that read the Markdown folder directly.

The plugin family includes MCP Connector, an in-process server with semantic search and a one-click .mcpb file for Claude Desktop, and Vault as MCP, a local HTTP server started from inside Obsidian. The bridge family includes mcp-obsidian and cyanheads/obsidian-mcp-server, which wrap the Local REST API plugin and need Obsidian open. The folder family, such as StevenStavrakis/obsidian-mcp, works with Obsidian closed.

All three families give Claude the same kind of view: one file at a time, found by name or by text search. That matches how Obsidian stores notes, and it is why the forum thread comparing Obsidian MCP servers turns on tool counts and editing precision. What none of them returns is the shape of the whole: which topics the vault holds, which concepts hold them together, and which pairs of topics never meet.

Is There an Official Obsidian MCP Server?

No. Obsidian does not ship an MCP server, and the r/ObsidianMD thread asking whether an official one is coming has no yes in it. The closest thing is the community Local REST API plugin, which now serves an MCP endpoint at https://127.0.0.1:27124/mcp/ behind the same bearer token it uses for its REST calls. Its plugin page states that the separate bridge servers "are no longer necessary" once this endpoint is enabled.

In practice the choice is narrower than the repo count suggests. If you run Claude Desktop and want a one-click install, MCP Connector. If you run Claude Code or Cursor and are happy with a config line, point the client at the Local REST API endpoint, or at mcp-obsidian or the cyanheads server if you want their typed tools for tags, frontmatter and section edits. Every one of these needs the Local REST API plugin or the vault folder; none is "official", and none shows structure.

Four Ways to Connect Claude to Your Obsidian Vault

The routes differ less in setup than in what Claude can see once connected. The table sets them side by side; the sections that follow give each route one honest paragraph and, for the MCP routes, the setup steps. Routes stack, so this is not a choice of one.

Route 1: Claude Code in the Vault Folder

Obsidian and Claude Code work together without MCP. A vault is a folder of Markdown files, and Claude Code reads folders: cd into the vault, run claude, and it can list, grep and write notes with [[wikilinks]]. A CLAUDE.md at the vault root holds your folder conventions; .claude/commands holds the prompts you repeat, such as a /today command that files the inbox into daily notes. Darren Rowse's non-coder guide runs exactly this; kepano/obsidian-skills packages the conventions as skills.

This is the fastest route and the right one for editing. Its limit is the reading method: Claude sees what grep returns. Ask "what does my vault say about attention" and it finds the notes containing the word, not the notes about the idea under another name, and not the fact that your attention notes and your sleep notes never link. Claude Desktop's Cowork folder access has the same reach: files in, files out.

Route 1 is also the base the MCP routes plug into. claude mcp add runs from the same vault folder, and the servers it registers, a file bridge or the InfraNodus graph layer, appear as tools in that session. The same JSON entry copies into Codex, Cursor or Claude Desktop, which is why most setup guides end with a config block rather than with what Claude can then see.

Route 2: Claude Inside Obsidian

A second family puts Claude in the Obsidian sidebar. Companion for Claude, Claudian, Claude Code Connector and the Claude Code IDE plugin (which Claude Code attaches to with the /ide command) each run Claude Code or the Anthropic API from inside the app, so the current note is the context and edits land in place. Ask ChatGPT how to connect Claude to your vault and it names eight of these plugins and no MCP server at all.

They are good at drafting where you are reading. They have the same horizon as Route 1: the open note, plus a search. None of them computes a view of the whole vault, so "what am I missing" gets an answer from the model's general knowledge, not from your notes.

Route 3: File-Access MCP Servers (MCP Connector, mcp-obsidian)

The claude obsidian mcp setup is the same four steps for every file-access server. First, install and enable the Local REST API plugin and copy its API key. Second, pick a server: MCP Connector for a one-click .mcpb install in Claude Desktop, or mcp-obsidian (Python) or cyanheads/obsidian-mcp-server (Node) for a bridge you configure yourself. Third, add the server to your client (claude_desktop_config.json or claude mcp add) with the key in an OBSIDIAN_API_KEY variable. Fourth, restart the client.

The port matters. The Local REST API plugin serves HTTPS on 27124 with a self-signed certificate and, if you enable it, plain HTTP on 27123; bridge servers let you turn off certificate checks for localhost. If you use the MCP Tools plugin and see "local rest api key is not configured", it means the Local REST API plugin is not installed, not enabled, or has not generated a key yet; MCP Tools depends on it.

What you get is Claude reading, writing, searching and, with the cyanheads server, editing sections, tags and frontmatter with typed tools. MCP Connector adds semantic search over the vault, runs Obsidian commands and loads tools adaptively so the client's context is not flooded; most servers also expose the active file. That is a real step up from grep. It is still a file view: each call returns one note or one list of matches, and the server has no idea how your topics relate.

Route 4: The Graph Layer: InfraNodus MCP Shows Claude the Vault's Structure

The InfraNodus MCP server adds a layer the file routes do not have. Point it at a folder, a note or a selection, and it builds a text network: words are normalized to their base forms and connected when they co-occur within a few words of each other. Community detection groups the densely connected concepts into topical clusters. Betweenness centrality finds the concepts on the paths between clusters, the ones your notes use to move between topics. Two clusters with almost no links between them are a structural gap.

That graph is what Claude reads. A call to generate_knowledge_graph returns the clusters and their top concepts for a folder; generate_topical_clusters names them; generate_content_gaps returns the pairs of clusters that never meet, with the statements from your notes on each side, so the answer to "what am I missing" comes from your vault, not from the model. retrieve_from_knowledge_base is the GraphRAG side: it pulls the statements relevant to a question together with the structural context around them.

The same graph is the one the Obsidian Graph View Plugin draws inside Obsidian, so what Claude reports as a gap is what you see as empty space between two coloured clusters. The /infranodus skill builds one saved graph per folder with a manifest, which lets Claude answer questions about the vault's themes from the graphs before it opens any file.

The methodology is the peer-reviewed text network analysis behind InfraNodus, the same one the web app uses; the GraphRAG page covers how the retrieval differs from vector search, and MCP vs RAG vs agents explains why MCP is the transport and the graph is the knowledge.

How to Set It Up: Claude Code, Obsidian and the InfraNodus MCP Server in Six Steps

The stepper above installs the pieces; this is the same setup in prose, for Claude Code, so you can see where each piece sits and why it is there. Claude Desktop follows the Claude deploy page and Cursor the Cursor deploy page with the same server URL; the steps after the connection are identical.

1. Create an account and an API key. A free InfraNodus account gives you an API key in the API panel. The key is what authorizes the MCP server to work in your account; the vault itself is never uploaded wholesale.

1. Add the server to Claude Code. In the terminal, run the command below. -s user makes it available in every project; use -s project to write a shareable .mcp.json into the vault instead. The hosted alternative is claude mcp add infranodus -s user --transport http https://mcp.infranodus.com/mcp, followed by /mcp inside Claude Code to authenticate in the browser with the same key.

claude mcp add infranodus -s user \
  -- env INFRANODUS_API_KEY=YOUR_INFRANODUS_KEY \
  npx -y infranodus-mcp-server

1. Install the /infranodus skill. Download it from the skill page and drop it into ~/.claude/skills/. The skill tells Claude how to graph a folder, how to name the graphs and how to query them later; without it Claude has the tools but not the procedure.

1. Open Claude Code in the vault. cd into the vault folder and run claude. Route 1 is now in place for editing, and the MCP server is in place for structure. Keep your CLAUDE.md; add one line to it saying that questions about themes, gaps or what to write next go to the InfraNodus graphs first.

1. Build the first graph. Type /infranodus and pick the folder you care about, not the whole vault: one research project, or this year's notes. Claude reads the notes, uploads them as statements to a graph named after the folder, and writes a manifest in the vault so the next session knows which graph covers what.

1. Add the plugin for the visual side. Install the Obsidian Graph View Plugin and paste the same API key into its settings, so the clusters and gaps Claude talks about are the ones you can click on, select, and send to AI Insights for a follow-up. One key serves the plugin, the MCP server and AI Insights; the plugin and the server read the same graph, so nothing is built twice.

What a Session Looks Like

You open Claude Code in the vault and ask: "What is my vault missing on attention?" Claude calls generate_topical_clusters on the attention folder's graph and reports four clusters: focus and distraction, sleep and recovery, the economics of attention, and meditation practice. It calls generate_content_gaps and finds that the sleep cluster and the economics cluster share almost no concepts, although both discuss time.

You ask it to remove the top nodes, the three concepts that appear in every note, and look again. Under them a smaller insight cluster appears: a handful of statements about environment design that connect to neither sleep nor economics. Claude retrieves those statements with retrieve_from_knowledge_base, then proposes a note titled "Attention as a scarce resource you can budget" that links [[sleep debt]] to [[attention economy]] through [[environment design]], quoting the two existing notes it bridges.

You read it, change two sentences, and tell Claude to write it to the folder with the wikilinks. Claude saves the bridging idea to your InfraNodus Project Notes as well, so the next session, in Obsidian or in Claude, starts from it. The graph found the gap; the model only drafted the note that fills it.

Stacking the Routes

The four routes do not compete; the file routes are transport and the graph layer is the reading. Claude Code in the vault folder is how edits happen; a file-access MCP server adds typed tools for tags, frontmatter and sections; an in-Obsidian plugin keeps Claude next to the note you are reading. The InfraNodus MCP server edits nothing: when it shows a gap, Claude writes the bridging note through Route 1 or the section tools of Route 3. A working setup is usually Route 1 plus Route 4.

This is the second brain setup the Claude and Obsidian guides describe, with one layer added: the agent's session starts from the graph of what the vault already holds rather than from an empty context. The LLM wiki setup shows the stack with an agent writing the wiki pages and the plugin showing where the wiki is thin; the AI second brain page assembles the whole loop from capture to insight.

Get Started

Frequently Asked Questions

Connect Claude to Your Vault

Create a free account, add the InfraNodus MCP server to Claude Code or Claude Desktop, and ask Claude what one folder of your vault is about. You will see the topics inside it, the concepts that connect them, and the gaps between them, in the graph and in Claude's answer.