Notes on coding agents and the pages they leave behind, on moving between notes apps, and on the plain mechanics of keeping what you think. Written and published from a Sumibako vault.
Obsidian MCP server: there is no official one. Which to install instead
Obsidian has no official MCP server. Six community ones compared: what each needs running, what it does on delete, and which to install for which job.
Prashant Shaw
Founder, Sumibako
7 min read
Every few weeks somebody asks where to download "the official Obsidian MCP server", in the voice of a person asking for the official Obsidian mug. There isn't one. There is a plugin with about 797,000 downloads that grew one in May, a Python server with more GitHub stars than any of them, and at least four others, two of which delete a note for good by default.
So here is the short version of a long afternoon spent reading their READMEs: what Obsidian itself ships, whether you need a server at all, the six worth knowing, and which one I would install for which job. Everything was checked on 18 October 2026. I build a different notes app, which turns up once near the end, mostly to say what it is not.
🌋 Is there an official one?
No. Obsidian's help pages, which live in a public GitHub repository, do not mention MCP once. What Obsidian does ship for programs that want your notes is two things:
The Obsidian CLI, since version 1.12, which can create, read, append to, search, move and delete notes from a terminal. It "requires the Obsidian app to be running", and if Obsidian is closed, the first command opens it.
Obsidian Headless, in open beta, a command line client for Obsidian Sync and Publish that needs no desktop app. Obsidian's own list of reasons to use it includes "Give agentic tools access to a vault without access to your full computer." Sync and Publish are paid add-ons, which is the business model working as intended.
Neither speaks MCP. Everything below comes from the community, and most of it lives in Obsidian's plugin directory.
Maybe not. A vault is a folder of Markdown files. Claude Code, Codex and Cursor run on your machine and can already read and write files, so pointing one at the vault folder gets you most of the way with nothing installed. Add the CLI and the agent can use Obsidian's own search as well. I compared Obsidian and Notion for exactly this, and the folder won.
A server earns its place when:
the app you are talking to is a chat window rather than a coding agent, and cannot open files by itself,
you want Obsidian's live view of the vault: its search, tags, backlinks and whichever note is open,
or you want limits a bare folder cannot give, such as read-only access or a list of folders the agent may touch.
📋 The six worth knowing
Server
How it reaches your notes
Obsidian must be open
Delete, by default
Popularity, 18 October
Local REST API with MCP
A plugin with the server built in
Yes
Moves the note to the trash
797k downloads
mcp-obsidian
Python, through the plugin above
Yes
Has a delete tool
4,480 stars
obsidian-mcp-server
TypeScript, through the plugin above
Yes
Permanent, no confirmation
697 stars
MCPVault
Works on the files directly
No
Permanent
1,693 stars
obsidian-mcp
Works on the files directly
No
Moves the note to its own trash
742 stars
Semantic Notes Vault MCP
A plugin with the server built in
Yes
Whatever you allow
466 stars
Downloads are from Obsidian's directory and stars from GitHub. Neither measures quality, but both measure where everybody else went, which is the next best thing.
Local REST API with MCP is the one to know about. It started as a REST API for the vault, became the plugin that two of the servers below depend on, and in version 4.0.0, on 15 May 2026, it added "a built-in Streamable HTTP MCP server". It now offers 20 tools, including Obsidian's own search, the note you have open, and any command in the palette. Its README is not shy about what that means for everyone else: "Several third-party MCP servers for Obsidian exist, but they are no longer necessary". Bold for a README, and as of this month mostly true. The price is a little setup: an API key, plus a certificate your client has to trust, or a plain HTTP port you switch on instead.
mcp-obsidian is the famous one, with more stars than any other here. It is a Python server, run with uvx, that talks to the Local REST API plugin. Now that the plugin speaks MCP itself, this is an interpreter standing between two people who have started speaking the same language. It works, and if it is already installed I would not rush to remove it.
obsidian-mcp-server is the same idea in TypeScript, with 14 tools, edits to a single heading or frontmatter field, and a read-only switch. Its delete tool, in its own README's words, removes the note "on the first call, with no confirmation", unless you turn on the confirmation setting.
MCPVault skips Obsidian entirely and works on the files, so there is no plugin and no app to keep open. One npx line in your client's settings and it is running. Read its delete section first, though: the default trash mode is none, which the README spells out as "permanent delete". Set it to local or system.
obsidian-mcp is also file-based, needs Node 22, and says "Obsidian does not need to be open." It is the most careful of the six about deleting: "Trash is the default", and a permanent delete needs the note's exact path repeated back to it.
Semantic Notes Vault MCP is a plugin with the server inside, like the first, and leans on structure: Dataview, Bases, and walking links and backlinks. It has a read-only mode and per-operation permissions, which is the right instinct.
NOTE:MCP Tools for Obsidian still turns up in older guides. Its author has archived it, writing that it reached 87,000 installs and that "There are at least five alternatives published to the Obsidian Community Plugins store". It began as "a labor of love" for the author's partner, who wanted to chat with her notes, which is the nicest origin story in this entire category.
🧭 Which one I would install
If you
Install
Use Claude Code, Codex or Cursor in a terminal
Nothing. Point it at the vault folder, and add the Obsidian CLI if you want Obsidian's search
Want a chat app on your desktop to search and write in Obsidian
Local REST API with MCP
Want it to work with Obsidian closed, on a server or in a script
obsidian-mcp, or MCPVault with the trash switched on
Want an agent that reads and never writes
Semantic Notes Vault MCP or obsidian-mcp-server, in read-only mode
Already run mcp-obsidian and like it
Keep it. You are allowed to be happy
For Claude Code, the Local REST API README gives the whole setup as one command, once the plugin is installed and you have copied its key:
🧨 Before you press Allow
All six can write, and at least five can delete. An agent that deletes the wrong note does it with tremendous confidence and a short summary of what it has done. So:
Put the vault in git, or at least behind a backup, before the first session. Two of the READMEs above say the same, at more length.
Check the delete column in the table, and change the default where it is permanent.
Look for a tool that runs Obsidian commands. The obsidian-mcp-server README says commands run "with the authority of a keyboard shortcut, so some commands are destructive (delete file, close vault)".
WARNING: Your vault is also something the agent reads. A web page you clipped into it last year can contain instructions, and the agent cannot tell them from yours. I wrote up what a connector can do to your data separately; the short version is to give write access only where you need it.
📱 What none of them can do
Every server here runs on your computer, either answering at 127.0.0.1 or started by the app that uses it. Claude on your phone, Claude.ai in a browser and ChatGPT on the web connect to servers on the internet, and your laptop is not one, thankfully. You can put a tunnel in front of a local server, but then your vault, delete tool and all, has an address on the internet, and I would want a very good reason.
If what you need is notes your AI can reach from anywhere, that is a hosted server. Notion has one, and so does the app I build, Sumibako. It is not Obsidian, and I would rather say so than have you find out: no plugins, no graph, no folder of files on your disk, and when it imports a vault a [[wikilink]] comes across as plain text. It is a notes app with one address, https://sumibako.com/api/mcp, that Claude, and ChatGPT on the plans that allow custom servers, can sign in to. If your notes live in Obsidian and your agents live on the same laptop, stay where you are. I compared eight notes apps' servers side by side if you want the wider view, and wrote about getting an Obsidian vault into a browser too.
So the official Obsidian MCP server turns out to be a community plugin with nearly 800,000 downloads, which is a very Obsidian way to have an official anything.
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