Obsidian CLI
Shares rank 42 of 86 privilege escalation tools by recommenders
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.
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.
10 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 8
- criticize it
- 2
- approval share
- 80%
Recommended in 4 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 8 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 4 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 4 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Scriptable access to notes and Bases
“another big win for the CLI is access to dynamic note database queries via Obsidian Bases”
Comment from 10 Feb 2026 in “Obsidian Introduces Obsidian CLI” “I welcome this "scriptability" improvement.”
Comment from 10 Feb 2026 in “Obsidian Introduces Obsidian CLI” Works well with AI agents
“accessible using obsidian-cli (and related Claude skills, thanks kepano)”
Comment from 21 Jun 2026 in “Stop wasting tokens and re explaining your project between sessions” “the CLI is great for agentic stuff”
Comment from 12 May 2026 in “The Future of Obsidian Plugins”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Requires the Obsidian UI to stay open
“you still have to keep the UI open to make the CLI work which is unfortunate”
Comment from 11 Feb 2026 in “Obsidian Introduces Obsidian CLI” Cannot view notes, only trigger features
“It's not super useful yet- you can't really view notes in the CLI but you can can trigger features like search.”
Comment from 28 Feb 2026 in “Obsidian Sync now has a headless client” “Why do you need Obsidian CLI to view notes when `cat` will do?”
Comment from 28 Feb 2026 in “Obsidian Sync now has a headless client”
Other privilege escalation tools people recommend
The four most recommended other privilege escalation tools, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
See all 86 privilege escalation tools, rankedWhat people said
9 of the 11 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“accessible using obsidian-cli (and related Claude skills, thanks kepano)”
“the CLI is great for agentic stuff”
“The Obsidian CLI enables many scenarios not possible with the Markdown files alone”
“Why do you need Obsidian CLI to view notes when `cat` will do?”
“It's not super useful yet- you can't really view notes in the CLI but you can can trigger features like search.”
“you still have to keep the UI open to make the CLI work which is unfortunate”
“I welcome this "scriptability" improvement.”
“another big win for the CLI is access to dynamic note database queries via Obsidian Bases”
“a friendlier interface is always welcome”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.