Seekstone

The Obsidian MCP server that needs no plugin, no running Obsidian app — and doesn't blow your context window.

Filesystem-direct · single-digit-ms search · ~2 KB payloads · 17 tools · macOS · Linux · Windows

seekstone.dev →

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	Seekstone	obsidian-mcp-server (#1 by downloads)	REST-proxy servers
Local REST API plugin	Not needed	Required	Required
Obsidian app running	Not needed — works with Obsidian closed	Required	Required
Search payload @ 10k notes	2.0 KB	47 KB	up to 95 MB
Warm search latency @ 10k notes	6.2 ms	732 ms (~118× slower)	up to 1,550 ms
Structured frontmatter queries	Built-in (query_notes) — property/date/size predicates, ~350 B answers	JSONLogic via REST	Varies

^{Same queries, same committed vaults, 20 runs each — full results across six servers and three vault sizes below, fully reproducible from the harness.}

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What is Seekstone?

Seekstone is an Obsidian MCP server — it gives Claude (and any Model Context Protocol client) direct read and write access to your Obsidian vault. No Obsidian app needs to be open, no plugins are required, and nothing leaves your machine.

It reads your vault directly from disk rather than routing through the Obsidian Local REST API plugin, and holds a warm full-text index in-process. The practical difference is twofold:

• Speed. Searches return in single-digit milliseconds warm — up to ~200× faster than every other Obsidian MCP server we benchmarked, because there's no subprocess to spawn and no HTTP round-trip per query.
• Context. A broad search that returns tens of megabytes and millions of tokens via a REST-proxy server returns ~3 KB via Seekstone — a 1,000–30,000× reduction that only widens as your vault grows.

Search comes in two modes: ranked full-text search (fuzzy, prefix, phrase), and structured metadata queries — query_notes filters by frontmatter properties (status, due, type, …), tags, folder, modified time, and size, answering questions like "which draft notes changed this week?" in a few hundred bytes instead of a search-and-read loop.

Claude can search and read your entire note library, in milliseconds, without burning most of its context window on a single tool call.

Published on npm as seekstone — install with npx -y seekstone. (Previously also published as obsidian-mcp-seekstone; that alias is deprecated but existing installs keep working.)

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Why Seekstone? The numbers.

Most Obsidian MCP servers return full note content for every search hit. On a broad query that's megabytes of text your LLM has to process — most of it irrelevant, all of it burning context window.

Seekstone returns short ranked excerpts instead (~120 characters by default, tunable per query). We benchmarked Seekstone against 5 popular Obsidian MCP servers across three vault sizes — 1,000 / 5,000 / 10,000 notes (20 runs each). Every number below is fully reproducible: the vaults are committed to this repo (generated from the public-domain 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica), so you can clone it and run the exact same benchmark yourself.

The point of testing three sizes is that this is where the architectures diverge — a real vault only grows.

Search payload — bytes returned per query (context tax; lower is better)

Server	Architecture	1k notes	5k notes	10k notes
🥇 Seekstone	in-process index	1.6 KB	1.8 KB	2.0 KB
mcpvault	fs-direct subprocess	1.7 KB	1.9 KB	2.2 KB
obsidian-mcp-server	REST API	55 KB	47 KB	47 KB
obsidian-mcp-pro	fs-direct subprocess	25 KB	84 KB	114 KB
obsidian-mcp	fs-direct subprocess	18 KB	105 KB	201 KB
mcp-obsidian	REST API	9.8 MB	45 MB	95 MB

Seekstone stays flat (~2 KB) no matter how big your vault gets, because it always returns ranked excerpts — and it's now the smallest payload of every server tested, edging out mcpvault at all three sizes. The REST-proxy servers return full note content for every match, so they grow with the vault — mcp-obsidian hits 95 MB at 10k notes, and a single broad query (the capital of) peaked at 370 MB / 97.8 million tokens in one tool call. At 10k notes that's a ~47,000× context-tax difference.

Search latency — warm median, ms (lower is better)

Server	1k notes	5k notes	10k notes	vs Seekstone @10k
🥇 Seekstone	1.1	3.1	6.2	—
obsidian-mcp-pro	46	213	430	~70× slower
obsidian-mcp-server	82	356	732	~118× slower
obsidian-mcp	82	405	811	~131× slower
mcpvault	96	467	958	~155× slower
mcp-obsidian	164	740	1,550	~251× slower

Every competitor spawns a subprocess or makes HTTP round-trips per query, and most do work that scales with vault size. Seekstone holds a warm in-process index — no IPC, no network — so it stays in single-digit milliseconds even at 10,000 notes. And the gap widens with scale: from 1k → 10k notes the competitors slow down 8–10×, while Seekstone barely moves — at 10,000 notes even the fastest alternative is ~70× slower.

Seekstone is the only Obsidian MCP server that stays flat on both payload and latency as your vault grows — and the only one with published, reproducible benchmarks. The harness, the synthetic vaults, and the full results are open source: see benchmark-scaling.md and the harness. Clone, run, verify.

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Install

Choose the method that suits you best.

Option 1 — One-click (Claude Desktop, no terminal needed)

1. Download seekstone.mcpb from GitHub Releases
2. Open it with Claude Desktop — double-click in Finder, or right-click → Open With → Claude Desktop
3. Pick your Obsidian vault folder when prompted

You'll know it worked when seekstone appears in Claude's toolbar. No JSON editing, no terminal, no Node.js required.

Option 2 — Guided setup (recommended for CLI users)

Open Terminal (macOS: Cmd+Space, type "Terminal", press Enter) and run:

npx -y seekstone init

You'll know it worked when Seekstone appears in Claude's toolbar under the plug icon.

Seekstone reads Obsidian's own vault registry to detect your vault, validates it, and either prints the config block to paste or patches Claude Desktop directly:

# Auto-detect vault, print config to paste
npx -y seekstone init

# Auto-detect vault, patch Claude Desktop in place (with backup)
npx -y seekstone init --write

# Specify vault explicitly if you have multiple
npx -y seekstone init --vault "/path/to/vault"

# Auto-configure Claude Code in one step (auto-detects vault, runs claude mcp add)
npx -y seekstone init --client code --write

# Or just print the Claude Code command without running it
npx -y seekstone init --client code

Option 3 — Manual config (Claude Desktop)

Add to claude_desktop_config.json (Settings → Developer → Edit Config):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "seekstone": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "seekstone"],
      "env": { "SEEKSTONE_VAULT": "/absolute/path/to/your/vault" }
    }
  }
}

Option 4 — Claude Code

Auto-detects your vault and configures Claude Code in one command:

npx -y seekstone init --client code --write

Or manually, if you prefer to specify the vault path explicitly:

claude mcp add seekstone --env SEEKSTONE_VAULT=/absolute/path/to/your/vault -- npx -y seekstone

Option 5 — Cursor

One-click: — then set SEEKSTONE_VAULT to your vault's absolute path in Cursor's MCP settings (the link installs a placeholder).

Or let the CLI auto-detect your vault and patch ~/.cursor/mcp.json (with a backup):

npx -y seekstone init --client cursor --write

Or add the block manually to ~/.cursor/mcp.json (global) or <project>/.cursor/mcp.json (per-project):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "seekstone": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "seekstone"],
      "env": { "SEEKSTONE_VAULT": "/absolute/path/to/your/vault" }
    }
  }
}

Option 6 — VS Code

One-click: — then set SEEKSTONE_VAULT to your vault's absolute path when VS Code opens the server config (the link installs a placeholder).

Or let the CLI auto-detect your vault and write the workspace config (.vscode/mcp.json in the current directory):

npx -y seekstone init --client vscode --write

Or add it from the terminal:

code --add-mcp '{"name":"seekstone","command":"npx","args":["-y","seekstone"],"env":{"SEEKSTONE_VAULT":"/absolute/path/to/your/vault"}}'

Or add the block manually to .vscode/mcp.json (workspace) or via Command Palette → MCP: Open User Configuration (user-global). Note VS Code's two quirks: the top-level key is servers (not mcpServers), and "type": "stdio" is required:

{
  "servers": {
    "seekstone": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "seekstone"],
      "env": { "SEEKSTONE_VAULT": "/absolute/path/to/your/vault" }
    }
  }
}

Requires VS Code 1.102+; seekstone appears in Copilot Chat's Agent mode tools picker.

Other MCP clients (Windsurf, Cline, …)

Seekstone is a standard MCP stdio server — any MCP client can run it. Use the same JSON block as above in your client's MCP config (command: npx, args: ["-y", "seekstone"], env SEEKSTONE_VAULT).

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After installing, restart the client. On startup Seekstone walks the vault, builds an in-memory full-text index (a few seconds for thousands of notes), and keeps it live as you edit. The 17 tools below are then available to Claude.

Requires Node.js ≥ 22 for the CLI options. The one-click .mcpb bundle has no external requirements.

If Seekstone saves you context, consider ⭐ starring the repo — it helps others find it.

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What can Claude do with your vault?

Once Seekstone is connected, you can ask Claude things like:

• "Search my notes for everything about [topic] and give me a summary" — uses search, returns ranked excerpts, not full files
• "Find all notes tagged #project and list their titles" — uses list_notes with a tag filter
• "Read just the 'Decisions' section of my [project] note" — uses read_note with a section selector, so only that slice enters context
• "What links to my [topic] note, and what does it link out to?" — uses get_backlinks and get_links to walk your graph
• "Append today's standup notes to my daily note" — uses append_periodic_note, resolving the daily-note path from your vault config (Obsidian doesn't need to be open)
• "Fix every occurrence of the old project name in this note" — uses replace_in_note, with a dry-run preview before it writes
• "Add a summary section to the bottom of [note]" — uses append_note, never touches frontmatter
• "Move all notes in /inbox to /archive/[year]" — uses move_note
• "Update the status field in this note's frontmatter to 'done'" — uses patch_frontmatter, preserves key order and quote style
• "Create a new meeting note for today with a standard template" — uses create_note

Claude never sees your full vault at once — it searches and reads selectively, so even large vaults (10k+ notes) stay within context budget.

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Tools

Read

Tool	Description
search	Full-text search. Returns ranked excerpts (default ~120 chars, tunable via excerptLength), not full notes. Fuzzy, prefix, and phrase queries.
query_notes	Structured metadata query. Filter by frontmatter key/value predicates (eq, ne, contains, exists, missing, gt/gte/lt/lte), tag, folder, modified time, and size; sort and select the fields you need. Returns compact rows (path + title by default), not note content.
read_note	Read the full content of a note by vault-relative path. Supports returning a single section, block, or line range.
list_notes	List notes, optionally filtered by folder prefix or tag.
list_tags	List all tags in the vault sorted by usage count (or alphabetically).
outline_note	Return a note's heading and block structure without its full content — cheap navigation before a targeted read.
get_backlinks	Find all notes that link to a given note.
get_links	List all outgoing wikilinks and markdown links from a note.
get_periodic_note	Read today's (or any date's) daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, or yearly note — path resolved from your vault config, no Obsidian required.

Write

Tool	Description
create_note	Create a note (optional frontmatter + body); parent directories are created automatically.
delete_note	Permanently delete a note. Irreversible.
move_note	Move or rename a note; destination directories are created automatically.
append_note	Append text to a note body without touching frontmatter.
patch_frontmatter	Set, update, or delete frontmatter keys without reordering existing keys or changing quote style.
patch_note	Insert text immediately after a heading without touching frontmatter.
replace_in_note	Replace the first occurrence of a word or phrase in the note body.
append_periodic_note	Append to today's periodic note, creating it from a template if it doesn't yet exist.

Fast and complete. Seekstone is the only Obsidian MCP server in our benchmark set to implement list_tags, outline_note, get_backlinks, and get_links — every other tested server supports only search, read, list, and write. Three more capabilities set it apart:

• Periodic notes, filesystem-direct. get_periodic_note and append_periodic_note resolve daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly note paths by reading your vault's own config (.obsidian/daily-notes.json and the Periodic Notes plugin) — with Obsidian closed. Every REST-based server can only do this while the app is running.
• Byte-identical frontmatter, guaranteed. patch_frontmatter edits YAML in place — preserving key order, quote style, and comments — and write-safety is proven byte-for-byte by the test harness. No other server we surveyed makes this guarantee.
• Zero coupling. No Obsidian app, no Local REST API plugin, no plugin-version drift. Just your files on disk.

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Configuration

Variable	Required	Description
SEEKSTONE_VAULT	Yes	Absolute path to your Obsidian vault.
SEEKSTONE_LOG_LEVEL	No	error | warn | info (default) | debug.
SEEKSTONE_LOG_FILE	No	Absolute path; when set, JSON-line logs are appended here (size-rotated).
SEEKSTONE_WATCH_POLL	No	Set to 1 to stat-poll for changes instead of native OS events — slower but reliable on network drives, WSL, and some containers.

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How it works

Seekstone walks the vault with fast-glob, parses each note's frontmatter (byte-aware, so writes can prove the frontmatter region is byte-identical pre- and post-write), and builds a MiniSearch full-text index in memory. Search returns short ranked excerpts rather than whole notes — that excerpt-not-document design is where the context-tax win comes from. A cross-platform file watcher (chokidar) keeps the index current as you edit in Obsidian.

Writes are conservative by design: append_note never touches frontmatter, and patch_frontmatter edits the YAML document in place rather than re-serializing it, preserving key order, quote style, and comments.

It's built to stay up. Seekstone is tested on macOS, Linux, and Windows in CI on every commit, its write tools are hardened against pathological (ReDoS) inputs, and a stray unhandled rejection is logged rather than crashed on — so your long-lived MCP session keeps its warm index instead of dropping out mid-conversation.

For a layer-by-layer tour of the codebase — packages, the server's internals, the end-to-end request flow, and the measurement harness — see docs/ARCHITECTURE.md.

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Security & privacy

Seekstone reads — and, via the write tools, modifies — files under SEEKSTONE_VAULT on your local disk. It makes no network calls and sends no telemetry. Logs are metadata-only by default (note contents only appear at debug level). Nothing is written outside the vault except an optional log file you configure.

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Frequently asked questions

Does the Obsidian app need to be running? No. Seekstone reads the vault folder directly from disk. Obsidian can be open or closed.

Do I need the Local REST API plugin? No. Seekstone bypasses it entirely — that's the source of the up-to-47,000× payload reduction. No plugins are required.

Which AI clients does it support? Any client that supports the Model Context Protocol (MCP) over stdio — Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, Continue, and others.

Is it safe to use on my vault? Seekstone never modifies files except when you explicitly invoke one of its write tools (the eight in the table above — create_note, append_note, patch_note, patch_frontmatter, replace_in_note, move_note, delete_note, append_periodic_note). It makes no network requests. The vault path is sandboxed — no tool can read or write outside it.

Does it work on Windows? Yes. Seekstone is tested on macOS, Linux, and Windows in CI on every commit.

What Obsidian vault sizes does it handle? Seekstone has been profiled against vaults with thousands of notes. The in-memory index is small (a few MB for a typical vault) and starts in a few seconds.

How does seekstone init find my vault automatically? It reads Obsidian's own vault registry (obsidian.json) — the same file Obsidian uses to track your known vaults. If you have one vault, it's selected automatically. If you have multiple, it lists them and asks you to pick with --vault.

What is the .mcpb file? An MCP Bundle — a self-contained zip with the server and its manifest. To install: double-click in Finder (or right-click → Open With → Claude Desktop), pick your vault, and you're done. No terminal or Node.js required.

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Contributing & development

Contributions welcome. See CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines, or jump straight in:

npm install                                          # install all workspace deps
npm test                                             # run all tests
npm run lint                                         # biome check
npm run build -w seekstone                           # tsup → dist/
npm run build:mcpb                                   # build seekstone.mcpb bundle

npx vitest run packages/server/src/tools/search.test.ts  # single test file
npx vitest run -t 'parses a typical frontmatter'         # single test by name
npx tsc -p packages/server/tsconfig.json --noEmit        # typecheck

Repository layout

Package	Purpose
packages/server	The published seekstone MCP server (17 tools, stdio, MiniSearch index, chokidar watcher).
packages/core	Shared vault primitives — walk, frontmatter parser, link/tag extractor, percentiles. Bundled into the server build.
packages/harness	Profiler + benchmark + write-safety harness (REST vs filesystem) that produced the payload numbers above. Dev-only; not published.

The server has a real build (tsup → dist/) and is published to npm. The harness is run from source via tsx. Releases are automated — see docs/RELEASING.md.

The measurement harness

The harness exists to reproduce the benchmark numbers that motivated the filesystem-direct design. It needs the Local REST API plugin for the rest backend.

export SEEKSTONE_VAULT="/absolute/path/to/your/vault"

npx tsx packages/harness/src/cli.ts profile --vault "$SEEKSTONE_VAULT"
npx tsx packages/harness/src/cli.ts bench \
  --queries packages/harness/queries/default.json \
  --stats reports/vault-stats.json
npx tsx packages/harness/src/cli.ts safety --vault "$SEEKSTONE_VAULT"

Harness env vars: SEEKSTONE_REST_API_KEY (from the Local REST API plugin) and SEEKSTONE_REST_URL (defaults to https://127.0.0.1:27124).

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Support

Seekstone is free and open source. If it saves you context (and money), you can buy me a coffee.

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License

MIT © Shaq Mughal