# Obsidian CLI

8 Hacker News commenters recommended Obsidian CLI and 2 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 4 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Lets scripts and AI agents query and control Obsidian from the terminal, including Bases queries. Caveat: the Obsidian desktop app must stay open, and the CLI cannot display notes.

## Why people recommend it

- Scriptable access to notes and Bases (2 comments): "another big win for the CLI is access to dynamic note database queries via Obsidian Bases" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46965358)) "I welcome this "scriptability" improvement." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46967173))
- Works well with AI agents (2 comments): "accessible using obsidian-cli (and related Claude skills, thanks kepano)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48623825)) "the CLI is great for agentic stuff" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48111296))

## What people warn about

- Requires the Obsidian UI to stay open (1 comments): "you still have to keep the UI open to make the CLI work which is unfortunate" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46974171))
- Cannot view notes, only trigger features (2 comments): "It's not super useful yet- you can't really view notes in the CLI but you can can trigger features like search." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47198448)) "Why do you need Obsidian CLI to view notes when `cat` will do?" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47198554))

## Where to get it

- [Visit the official site](https://obsidian.md/)

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Obsidian CLI", https://hackerapproved.com/p/obsidian-cli/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).