Obsidian 1.12 added a command line interface. The feature request dates back to May 2020. Nearly six years later, it's here — and the timing couldn't be better.
The CLI lets you read, write, search, and append to notes from your terminal. That means any agent with shell access — OpenClaw, Claude Code, OpenCode, Codex — can now use an Obsidian vault as structured memory without plugins, hacks, or workarounds.
Setup is three steps:
- Install or update to Obsidian 1.12
- Enable the CLI in settings
- Point your agent at the vault
That's it. Your agent can now create notes, append to daily notes, search across your vault, and work with Obsidian's markdown format natively. Since Obsidian stores everything as local markdown files, there's no API layer, no sync conflicts, no vendor lock-in. The CLI just talks to the same files you see in the app.
For OpenClaw users specifically, the integration is natural. OpenClaw already thinks in markdown — its memory files, workspace, and skills are all .md. An Obsidian vault becomes an extension of that pattern: a shared knowledge base that both you and your agent can browse, edit, and organize.
Obsidian CEO Steph Ango has already published Agent Skills that define Obsidian's file types — markdown, Bases, and JSON Canvas — so agents understand the vault's structure. XDA's Joe Rice-Jones documented the setup with Claude Code and called it transformative for research workflows.
The bigger picture: Obsidian as a shared brain between human and agent. You take notes during the day, your agent processes and connects them overnight. Your agent researches a topic, you review the results in your vault over coffee. Markdown as the universal interface.
Obsidian CLI docs — requires Obsidian 1.12+