| FMRS | 64 / 100 · C | 84 / 100 · B | 79 / 100 · B |
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| Reliability | 7 / 20 | 17 / 20 | 12 / 20 |
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| Security and permissions | 14 / 20 | 16 / 20 | 18 / 20 |
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| Maintenance | 13 / 20 | 16 / 20 | 15 / 20 |
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| Documentation | 16 / 20 | 17 / 20 | 19 / 20 |
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| Setup experience | 14 / 20 | 18 / 20 | 15 / 20 |
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| Best for | - Users who need programmatic control over their Obsidian vault for automation and AI integration.
- Developers and power users building note-taking automation workflows.
- Scenarios where AI agents need to act on your notes directly without exporting or manual copying.
| - Local assistants that need to work inside explicitly approved directories
- Individuals and development teams that want path-based data boundaries
| - Serious Obsidian users who want AI agents reading and writing their vault
- Users wanting self-hosted, plugin-free operation with no external APIs
- Mobile/multi-device workflows accessing the vault remotely
- Security-conscious users (OAuth 2.1, atomic writes, container hardening)
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| Not for | - Users uncomfortable with technical setup or unable to handle self-signed certificates.
- Scenarios requiring public access or non-local servers, as the server is designed for local use.
- Clients that require other MCP transports (like SSE or stdio) or don't support Streamable HTTP.
| - Highly sensitive environments that cannot allow model access to local file contents
- Shared remote file-service use cases
| - Users unwilling to run Docker or self-host a server
- Non-Obsidian note tools (Notion, Logseq, etc.)
- Scenarios requiring only a stdio local process without an HTTP server
- Remote multi-device sync without an Obsidian Sync subscription (the remote image requires one)
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| Required permissions | - Full read, write, and delete access to all files in your Obsidian vault.
- Execute any Obsidian command (equivalent to using the command palette).
- Access information about the currently active file.
- Open files in the Obsidian UI.
| - Read access to every local directory listed in the configuration
- Filesystem write access when write or move tools are enabled
| - Read/write access to the Obsidian vault folder (bind mount /vault, rw)
- Persistent /data volume (search index, OAuth token DB, logs)
- MCP_AUTH_TOKEN as Bearer token (also the JWT signing key)
- Obsidian Sync token for headless sync in remote mode
- Local download of embedding/reranker models (~45MB total), no external API calls
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| Risks and side effects | - If the API key is compromised, an attacker can view and modify all your notes, execute commands, or delete files.
- The self-signed certificate could be susceptible to man-in-the-middle attacks if not verified properly.
- Executing commands can lead to unintended modifications, such as deleting or overwriting notes.
- The local HTTP server could be exploited by other local programs if port binding is not secure.
| - Sensitive files inside an allowed directory may enter model context
- Write and move tools change real files; keep scopes narrow and maintain backups
| - The server can read and write personal notes — guard MCP_AUTH_TOKEN carefully; leaking it exposes the whole vault
- Writes to real note files; despite atomic writes and protected paths, misconfiguration can alter data
- OAuth token DB lives on the /data volume; container compromise could expose valid sessions
- Remote deployments expose a public port — set PUBLIC_URL and reverse proxy correctly
- The remote image bundles proprietary obsidian-headless (not MIT-licensed); requires an active Obsidian Sync subscription
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| Supported clients | Claude Desktop | Claude Desktop, Cursor, Cline, Windsurf | Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Claude.ai, Cursor, OpenCode, MCP Inspector |
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| Tools | 16 | 6 | 30 |
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