claude-obsidian: Self-Organizing AI Second Brain for Obsidian + Claude Code

Claude + Obsidian knowledge companion and self-organizing AI second brain. A running AI notetaker that builds and maintains a persistent, compounding wiki vault. Every source you add gets integrated. Every question you ask pulls from everything that has been read. Knowledge compounds like interest.

Open-source Obsidian AI plugin for AI note-taking, personal knowledge management (PKM), second-brain workflows, and a private Notion alternative. 15 Claude Code skills, multi-agent support, multi-writer safe (v1.7+), first-class methodology modes (LYT / PARA / Zettelkasten / Generic via v1.8), and the 10-principle thinking framework (v1.9). Based on Andrej Karpathy's LLM Wiki pattern.

Two ways to get this skill. Pick the one that fits how you work.

• 🌐 Public open-source build (latest: v1.9.2, recommended): the free, MIT-licensed release on Daniel Agrici's GitHub. Open to anyone, no membership required. Ships everything: v1.7 Compound Vault, v1.8 methodology modes, and the v1.9 thinking framework plus audit hardening.
• ⚡ AI Marketing Hub Pro: the same MIT-licensed core, plus earliest access to in-development features before they land here, direct collaboration, and the Pro community. Pro members install from the AI Marketing Hub org mirror (swap note under Option 2 below).

✨ v1.7 "Compound Vault" refoundation: Obsidian CLI as default transport, hybrid retrieval (contextual prefix + BM25 + cosine rerank per Anthropic's Sept 2024 research), per-file advisory locking that closes a latent multi-writer corruption hole, and substrate alignment with kepano/obsidian-skills. Full guide: docs/compound-vault-guide.md. Optional DragonScale Memory extension (log folds, deterministic page addresses, semantic tiling lint, boundary-first autoresearch).

Contents

• What It Does
• Why claude-obsidian?
• Quick Start
• Commands
  • /wiki: setup, scaffold, continue
  • /autoresearch: autonomous research loop
  • /canvas: visual layer
  • /think: 10-principle thinking loop
• Methodology Modes (v1.8+)
• Vault Use Cases (v1.0+)
• Cross-Project Knowledge Base
• What Gets Created
• Architecture
• MCP Setup (Optional)
• Plugins
• CSS Snippets
• Banner Plugin
• File Structure
• AutoResearch Configuration
• Seed Vault
• Companion: claude-canvas
• FAQ
• Requirements
• Uninstall
• Contributing
• Related Projects
• Community
• License

What It Does

YouTube Demo

You drop sources. Claude reads them, extracts entities and concepts, updates cross-references, and files everything into a structured Obsidian vault. The wiki gets richer with every ingest.

You ask questions. Claude reads the hot cache (recent context), scans the index, drills into relevant pages, and synthesizes an answer. It cites specific wiki pages, not training data.

You lint. Claude finds orphans, dead links, stale claims, and missing cross-references. Your wiki stays healthy without manual cleanup.

At the end of every session, Claude updates a hot cache. The next session starts with full recent context, no recap needed.

Why claude-obsidian?

Most Obsidian AI plugins are chat interfaces. They answer questions about your existing notes. claude-obsidian is a knowledge engine. It creates, organizes, maintains, and evolves your notes autonomously.

📖 Deep dive: I Turned Obsidian Into a Self-Organizing AI Brain. Full breakdown with data visualizations, market context, and workflow demos.

Quick Start

ℹ️ The commands below install the public open-source build from AgriciDaniel/claude-obsidian (recommended, no membership needed). AI Marketing Hub Pro members who want early access to in-development features can swap AgriciDaniel/claude-obsidian for AI-Marketing-Hub/claude-obsidian (Option 2 also swaps the plugin slug; see the note under that option).

Option 1: Clone as vault (recommended, full setup in 2 minutes)

git clone https://github.com/AgriciDaniel/claude-obsidian
cd claude-obsidian
bash bin/setup-vault.sh

Open the folder in Obsidian: Manage Vaults → Open folder as vault → select claude-obsidian/.

Open Claude Code in the same folder. Type /wiki.

ℹ️ setup-vault.sh configures graph.json (filter + colors), app.json (excludes plugin dirs), and appearance.json (enables CSS). Run it once before the first Obsidian open. You get the fully pre-configured graph view, color scheme, and wiki structure out of the box.

Option 2: Install as Claude Code plugin

Plugin installation is a two-step process. First add the marketplace catalog, then install the plugin from it.

ℹ️ Which version are you installing?

• Public (recommended, no membership): the commands below install the free, MIT-licensed release from AgriciDaniel/claude-obsidian. Nothing to sign up for.
• AI Marketing Hub Pro member? For early access to in-development features, swap AgriciDaniel/claude-obsidian for AI-Marketing-Hub/claude-obsidian and the plugin slug claude-obsidian@agricidaniel-claude-obsidian for claude-obsidian@ai-marketing-hub-claude-obsidian. The org mirror requires an authenticated gh auth login (or GitHub PAT) with access to the AI-Marketing-Hub org. If /plugin marketplace add returns a 404, your account is not in the org yet. DM in the Skool community to get added.

# Step 1: add the marketplace
claude plugin marketplace add AgriciDaniel/claude-obsidian

# Step 2: install the plugin
claude plugin install claude-obsidian@agricidaniel-claude-obsidian

In any Claude Code session: /wiki. Claude walks you through vault setup.

To check it worked:

claude plugin list

Option 3: Add to a