Obsidiand Skills: Claude Integration Made Easy

Introduction

Obsidian is a popular Markdown‑based knowledge‑management tool, but its real power can be unleashed when combined with advanced AI agents. The obsidian‑skills repository (https://github.com/kepano/obsidian-skills) implements the Agent Skills specification so that any skill‑compatible agent—Claude, Codex, or other—can read, write, and manipulate Obsidian files natively.

Why open‑source skills?

• Extensibility – Add new skills or tweak existing ones with GitHub‑style collaboration.
• Cross‑platform – Works on Windows, macOS, Linux, and via CLIs.
• Community‑driven – 6.6 k stars and 315 forks testify to its real‑world usefulness.

What Are Obsidian Skills?

The repository contains a set of plain‑text skill files written in the format defined by the Agent Skills specification. Each skill describes a small, well‑defined task: “Create an Obsidian MD file,” “Insert JSON Canvas data,” or “Add an Obsidian Base.”

With a skill folder in the following structure:

skills/
├─ obsidian.md   // Skill for Markdown files
├─ obsidian.base // Skill for Obsidian Bases
└─ canvas.json   // Skill for JSON Canvas

Installation Options

There are three convenient ways to install obsidian‑skills:

1. Obsidian Marketplace

From inside Obsidian, search for the obsidian‑skills plugin and click "Install".

2. Manual Install – Claude Code

1. Clone or download the repo.
2. Copy the skills/ directory into /.claude at the root of your Obsidian vault.
3. Restart Claude Code.

3. Codex CLI

1. Clone the repo.
2. Copy skills/ to your Codex skills path (e.g., ~/.codex/skills).
3. Run the Codex CLI and invoke the skill.

Using the Skills in Practice

A. Generating an Outline with Claude

Create a prompt:

"Generate an outline for a research paper on AI in Education. Use skill: obsidian.md to save to a new file."`
Claude will call the `obsidian.md` skill, creating a new Markdown file pre‑filled with the outline.

### B. Populating JSON Canvas
If you work heavily with JSON Canvas, a request like:

C. Editing Obsidian Base Files

The obsidian.base skill can modify your data‑model files, enabling automated theme changes or link management.

Example Use Cases

Contributing

• Fork the repo, commit changes, and open a pull request.
• Issues welcome—search before opening to avoid duplicates.
• The MIT license means you can adapt the skills for personal or commercial use.

Conclusion

Obsidiand‑skills gives Obsidian a direct line to state‑of‑the‑art LLMs. Whether you’re a researcher, writer, or software engineer, the ability to programmatically generate, edit, and organize files inside Obsidian boosts your productivity and lets you focus on higher‑level thinking. Install, try out the example prompts, and join the community of developers pushing the boundaries of AI note‑taking.