Obsidian Search & Discovery

Full-text search, tag operations, and link graph traversal using the official Obsidian CLI.

Prerequisites

• Obsidian desktop v1.12.4+ with CLI enabled
• Obsidian must be running

When to Use

Use this skill automatically when:

• User wants to search vault content or metadata
• User asks about tags, tag counts, or tag management
• User wants to explore note links or backlinks
• User needs to find orphaned or unlinked notes
• User asks about broken/unresolved wikilinks

Search

Full-Text Search

# Basic search
obsidian search query="project roadmap"

# JSON output for parsing
obsidian search query="architecture" format=json

# Limit results
obsidian search query="meeting" limit=10

# Open results in Obsidian
obsidian search:open query="review needed"

Property-Based Search

# Search by property value
obsidian search query="[status:active]"

# Search by tag
obsidian search query="[tag:publish]"

# Combined
obsidian search query="[status:draft] [tag:blog]"

Tags

List Tags

# All tags in vault
obsidian tags

# Tags sorted by frequency
obsidian tags sort=count

# Tags sorted by name
obsidian tags sort=name

Find Notes by Tag

# Notes with a specific tag
obsidian tag tagname=pkm

# Notes with nested tag
obsidian tag tagname=project/active

Rename Tags

# Bulk rename across vault (updates all notes)
obsidian tags:rename old=meeting new=meetings

Links

Outgoing Links

# Links from a note
obsidian links file="Architecture Overview"

Backlinks (Incoming Links)

# Notes that link to this note
obsidian backlinks file="API Design"

Unresolved Links

# Broken wikilinks (targets don't exist)
obsidian unresolved

Orphaned Notes

# Notes with no incoming or outgoing links
obsidian orphans

Common Flags

Flag	Description
format=json	JSON output for machine parsing
format=csv	CSV output
limit=N	Limit result count
sort=count|name|date	Sort order
--copy	Copy result to clipboard

Agentic Optimizations

Context	Command
Search (structured)	obsidian search query="term" format=json
Tag frequency analysis	obsidian tags sort=count
Find tagged notes	obsidian tag tagname=X
Broken link audit	obsidian unresolved
Orphan detection	obsidian orphans
Link graph for note	obsidian links file="X" then obsidian backlinks file="X"

Related Skills

• vault-files — Read, create, and manage notes
• properties — Search and filter by frontmatter properties