Obsidian + Claude Code: The Setup I Use Every Day — Lukas von Kunhardt Obsidian + Claude Code: The Setup I Use Every Day<br>2026-08-19 What you work out with Claude in a chat window gets buried in that chat. Nothing accumulates. Point Claude Code at your Obsidian vault instead, and the same work lands in plain files on your own computer, where it can stay and compound.

This works because relevant infromation can be externalized to files which both of you can easily access. You can read it, and so can Claude. What accumulates is a shared memory. Neither of you needs an abstraction layer in between, and that matters more than it sounds (more on this later).

I’m going to walk you through how it works: what it looks like on screen, how I organize the vault, and where it works well and where it doesn’t. You do not need special plugins, no MCP server, and you don’t have to be a developer. You don’t need to pay for anything other than a subscription to Claude, or to any other language model provider.

What does the setup actually look like?

My day to day setup looks like this: I have Obsidian open, and Claude Code. If I have a big enough screen, I like to view them at the same time. I have Claude open on the left. I mostly use a dictation tool to talk to Claude (read my best dictation tool for Mac article if you want to know more), or just use wisprflow or something like that. And on the right side I have my vault.

I use Obsidian for viewing the outputs of whatever Claude is writing. The idea is that Obsidian is a markdown viewer and editor. It allows me to have a sort of collaboration with Claude, where I can almost work in it like in Google Docs.

I use this for all kinds of projects: work, personal, anything, writing. The project itself doesn’t have to be text. Your thinking about it is, and so is your conversation with Claude. So the habit is simple: every time I work something out about a project, it goes into some note in that project’s folder, and every time Claude works something out worth keeping, it goes into the same folder. That is what gives Claude the same picture of the project that I have. And the folder of markdown notes is better at retaining information than either of us. I forget what I decided in March, and Claude remembers nothing from the last chat we had.

How does Claude Code see my notes?

First of all, you have to understand the concept of Claude Code and how it’s different from the Claude chat. In Claude Code, you start by opening a folder. No matter where you use Claude Code, whether it’s the terminal version or the app version, it’s going to ask you to point it to some file location, and this is the starting point.

If you were starting from scratch and had never used this before, you would open Obsidian first, and then you would create a vault. It’s going to ask you to point it to some location or pick a default location, and it’s just going to create a folder. In Obsidian you have a sidebar, and in the sidebar you see nested folders, and in the folders you see your notes. And this mirrors exactly the file structure that exists on your computer. What you see in Obsidian as folders and nicely written and rendered notes is just folders on your computer with markdown files in them. This is the core of the magic. If you point Claude Code at some folder on your computer, it’s going to have access to, and see, the exact same files you’re seeing.

Say you wanted to start some project, and it’s going to be a more complicated one: some research project, some new project for work, whatever. You would create a new folder in your vault, and in this folder you might collect notes for anything relevant to this project. And the nice thing is: if you now switch to Claude Code, you can point it at the same folder location, and then it’s going to see everything you’re writing. And it can also edit and suggest changes to your own writing.

Depending on what mode you select in Claude Code, you can either approve each change manually, so you are in full control of what Claude does to your notes, or you can give it full control if it’s a more hands-off thing.

Do you need the Obsidian Claude Code plugin or an MCP server?

If you work on your computer and you have Claude there and you have Obsidian there, then there’s nothing else you need to do. Because Obsidian just looks at files on your machine, and Claude Code natively, by design, is supposed to work with files on your machine. They are a match made in heaven. They are directly complementary to each other.

What is on offer falls into three groups, and it helps to know which one you are looking at.

The first group runs Claude Code inside an Obsidian sidebar. I don’t see the point. Having two windows open is not something you need a special app for.

The second group are editor context bridges, which tell Claude which note you have open and what text you have selected. That is at least a real gap, but it is easy enough to just tell Claude which file...