All skills / Obsidian

Claude skill for Obsidian, tested: the official five-pack

The definitive Obsidian skill package is maintained by kepano — Steph Ango, Obsidian's CEO — which makes it as close to official as this ecosystem gets. It is actually five skills in one repo, and only one of them needs Obsidian installed. We installed all five.

TESTEDWORKS

Repo: kepano/obsidian-skills
Stars: 43,034 as of 2026-07-23
Commit tested: a1dc48e
Install: npx skills add https://github.com/kepano/obsidian-skills -a claude-code -s '*' -y
Install time: 2.0s (measured)
Environment: os Linux 6.18.5 (cloud sandbox), node v22.22.2
Failures hit: 0
Tested on: 2026-07-23

obsidian-cli skill drives the Obsidian CLI which needs the desktop app (not present on a headless Linux box) — install verified, end-use needs user's machine. The other four (markdown/bases/json-canvas/defuddle) are instruction-only and fully usable anywhere.

What you actually get: five skills, not one

Skill	What it does	Needs Obsidian running?
`obsidian-cli`	Drives the Obsidian CLI: read, create, search notes, manage tasks and properties, even develop and debug plugins/themes against the live app	Yes — desktop app open
`obsidian-markdown`	Obsidian's markdown dialect: wikilinks, embeds, callouts, properties/frontmatter	No
`obsidian-bases`	The Bases format (Obsidian's database views) — the largest reference in the pack	No
`json-canvas`	Read/write JSON Canvas files (whiteboards)	No
`defuddle`	Clean web pages into readable markdown for clipping into a vault	No

That split matters more than any listing conveys: four of the five are pure format knowledge that works anywhere — an agent on a server can write valid Bases views and canvases into your synced vault without Obsidian existing on that machine. Only obsidian-cli requires the app, and it says so in its first line.

The install, as it actually happened

npx skills add https://github.com/kepano/obsidian-skills -a claude-code -s '*' -y

2.0 seconds, all five skills landed. One trap worth flagging: the upstream README lists the SSH form first ([email protected]:kepano/obsidian-skills.git), which fails on any machine without GitHub SSH keys — if the install errors on authentication, use the https URL above. The Claude Code plugin-marketplace route (/plugin marketplace add kepano/obsidian-skills) also works if you prefer managed updates.

What broke

Nothing broke. Install and the minimal use case both ran clean on first try — rarer than you would think, and worth saying explicitly.

Who it's for

Anyone whose notes live in Obsidian and whose agent sessions keep producing content that belongs there. The honest framing: this pack's value is highest on your own machine, where obsidian-cli unlocks live vault search and plugin development. On a remote box you still get the four format skills — which is precisely what most "agent writes to my vault" workflows need. It is also, at 43k stars, the most battle-tested item in our entire first batch.

FAQ

Does this replace an Obsidian MCP server?

Different layer. MCP servers expose vault operations as tools; these skills teach the agent Obsidian's formats and CLI. They compose — and for plain "write me a proper note with wikilinks and frontmatter" work, the skills alone are enough.

Which one should I install if I only want one?

obsidian-markdown, for vault-formatted writing anywhere. Add obsidian-cli when the agent runs on the same machine as your vault. The installer's -s flag takes individual names.