Obsidian Block

The Obsidian block connects your workflows to a locally running Obsidian vault via the Local REST API plugin. Use it to list vault contents, read individual note files, or run full-text searches across all notes—making your personal knowledge base an active participant in any workflow.

Overview

When to Use

• Browse the files and folders inside a vault directory (or the vault root) to discover available notes.
• Fetch the full Markdown content of a specific note by file path so downstream blocks can process it.
• Search across the entire vault with a plain-text query and get ranked matches with context snippets.
• Feed note content into an Agent block for summarization, Q&A, or extraction tasks.
• Trigger downstream logic based on notes found in a particular folder at workflow start.
• Combine with a Loop block to iterate over a list of files and process each one individually.

Configuration

Operation

Selects which vault action to perform. Required; defaults to obsidian_list_files.

Path

Directory path relative to the vault root whose contents should be listed. Leave empty to list the vault root. Only shown when Operation is obsidian_list_files.

Filename

Path to the target file relative to the vault root (e.g. Projects/meeting-notes.md). Only shown when Operation is obsidian_get_file. Required for that operation.

Query

Plain-text search term to find across all vault notes. Only shown when Operation is obsidian_search. Required for that operation.

Base URL

The base URL of the Obsidian Local REST API plugin (e.g. https://127.0.0.1:27124). Required for all operations.

API Key

The API key generated inside the Obsidian Local REST API plugin settings. Stored as a secret and never exposed in logs. Required for all operations.

Inputs & Outputs

• Inputs:

  • operation (string) — Operation to perform (obsidian_list_files, obsidian_get_file, or obsidian_search)
  • apiKey (string) — Obsidian Local REST API key
  • baseUrl (string) — Base URL for the Obsidian Local REST API
  • path (string) — Directory path relative to vault root (used by List files)
  • filename (string) — File path relative to vault root (used by Get file)
  • query (string) — Search query (used by Search)

• Outputs:

  • data (json) — Result from Obsidian (file list, note content, or search results depending on the operation)
  • metadata (json) — Response metadata (e.g. count for list/search, filename for get file)

Tools

• Obsidian List Files (obsidian_list_files) — Calls GET /vault/<path>/ on the Local REST API and returns the array of file and directory names at that path. The metadata.count field reports how many entries were returned.
• Obsidian Get File (obsidian_get_file) — Calls GET /vault/<filename> and returns the raw Markdown content of the note. The metadata.filename field echoes the requested path.
• Obsidian Search (obsidian_search) — Calls POST /search/simple/?query=<query> and returns an array of matching notes with their filenames, relevance scores, and context snippets. The metadata.count field reports the number of matches.

YAML Example

obsidian_1:
  type: obsidian
  name: "Obsidian"
  inputs:
    operation: "obsidian_search"
    baseUrl: "{{OBSIDIAN_BASE_URL}}"
    apiKey: "{{OBSIDIAN_API_KEY}}"
    query: "{{start.searchTerm}}"
  connections:
    outgoing:
      - target: next-block-id