mcp-knowledge-base MCP server

Example MCP server to interact with Obsidian.

Components

Tools

The server implements multiple tools to interact with Obsidian:

• list_files_in_vault: Lists all files and directories in the root directory of your Obsidian vault
• list_files_in_dir: Lists all files and directories in a specific Obsidian directory
• get_file_contents: Return the content of a single file in your vault.
• search: Search for documents matching a specified text query across all files in the vault
• patch_content: Insert content into an existing note relative to a heading, block reference, or frontmatter field.
• append_content: Append content to a new or existing file in the vault.

Example prompts

Its good to first instruct Claude to use Obsidian. Then it will always call the tool.

The use prompts like this:

• Get the contents of the last architecture call note and summarize them
• Search for all files where Azure CosmosDb is mentioned and quickly explain to me the context in which it is mentioned
• Summarize the last meeting notes and put them into a new note 'summary meeting.md'. Add an introduction so that I can send it via email.

Configuration

Environment Variables

Create a .env file in the root directory with the following required variable:

OBSIDIAN_API_KEY=your_api_key_here

Without this API key, the server will not be able to function.

Quickstart

Install

Obsidian REST API

You need the Obsidian REST API community plugin running: https://github.com/coddingtonbear/obsidian-local-rest-api

Install and enable it in the settings and copy the api key.

Claude Desktop

On MacOS: ~/Library/Application\ Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

On Windows: %APPDATA%/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

Development/Unpublished Servers Configuration

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "mcp-knowledge-base": {
      "command": "uv",
      "args": [
        "--directory",
        "<dir_to>/mcp-knowledge-base",
        "run",
        "mcp-knowledge-base"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Published Servers Configuration

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "mcp-knowledge-base": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": [
        "mcp-knowledge-base"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Development

Building and Publishing

To prepare the package for distribution:

1. Sync dependencies and update lockfile:

uv sync

2. Build package distributions:

uv build

This will create source and wheel distributions in the dist/ directory.

3. Publish to PyPI:

uv publish

Note: You'll need to set PyPI credentials via environment variables or command flags:

• Token: --token or UV_PUBLISH_TOKEN
• Or username/password: --username/UV_PUBLISH_USERNAME and --password/UV_PUBLISH_PASSWORD

Debugging

Since MCP servers run over stdio, debugging can be challenging. For the best debugging experience, we strongly recommend using the MCP Inspector.

You can launch the MCP Inspector via npm with this command:

npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector uv --directory /path/to/mcp-knowledge-base run mcp-knowledge-base

Upon launching, the Inspector will display a URL that you can access in your browser to begin debugging.

You can also watch the server logs with this command:

tail -n 20 -f ~/Library/Logs/Claude/mcp-server-mcp-knowledge-base.log