append_note
Append text to a note body without touching the frontmatter. Safe for meeting notes, daily logs, and append-only workflows.
LABSCO SUMMARY
A vault search that returns excerpts, not megabytes.
The whole design is about what comes back: a broad search returns about 2.0 KB at 10,000 notes because the result is ranked excerpts, and query_notes answers "which draft notes changed this week?" straight from frontmatter in a few hundred bytes instead of a search-then-read loop. Reading the vault from disk behind a warm in-process index is what makes it quick — 6.2 ms warm at 10,000 notes in the project's own published benchmark — and means Obsidian never has to be open. On the write side, deletes land in .trash/ and every write tool accepts prevHash, so a concurrent edit fails loudly rather than disappearing.
What it is
An Obsidian server that reads the vault from the filesystem and keeps a warm full-text index in process, so neither the Obsidian app nor its Local REST API plugin needs to be running. Searches return ranked excerpts instead of whole notes, and the write tools edit sections rather than rewriting files.
What you get
- Full-text search with fuzzy and prefix matching, returning ranked excerpts of roughly 200 characters rather than whole notes
- Structured metadata queries — frontmatter key/value predicates, tag, folder, modified time and size — answered as compact rows
- A context pack that assembles ranked excerpts, linked neighbour notes and backlinks for one question inside a byte budget, 2048 by default
- A note read whole, or just a heading section, a block reference, or a line range
- A note's outline — heading tree with offsets, block anchors, frontmatter keys — with no prose at all, for deciding what to read next
- Backlinks from a pre-built reverse-link index with their source lines, and a note's outgoing links marked resolved or unresolved
- Notes created, appended to, and patched section by section instead of rewritten whole
- Frontmatter keys set, changed or deleted without reordering the others or changing quote style
- Find and replace inside a note body, literal or regex, with a dry run available and frontmatter left alone
- A note moved or renamed with every wikilink and markdown link pointing at it rewritten across the vault, and a heading renamed with each [[note#heading]] reference updated
- Deletes that go to the vault's .trash/ by default, with permanent as the explicit opt-out
- prevHash on all nine write tools: a note that changed since you read it produces a hash_conflict error carrying the current hash rather than a silent overwrite
- Daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly periodic notes resolved from the vault's own config, created from its template and appended to
- Tags listed with usage counts, substring filtering and a minimum-count threshold, nested tags carrying their parent
Requirements
Node.js 22 or newer, and the absolute path to your vault in SEEKSTONE_VAULT. npx -y seekstone init reads Obsidian's own vault registry to find it and writes the config for Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor or VS Code; the .mcpb bundle installs into Claude Desktop with no Node needed at all. On startup it walks the vault and builds an in-memory index — a few seconds for thousands of notes — then keeps it live as you edit. Nothing leaves the machine. Semantic search is opt-in and takes a one-time model download of about 30 MB, after which it runs offline.
Setup effort
One command — npx -y seekstone
USE CASES
01
Answering a question out of your own notes
Hand the question to the context pack and get excerpts, backlinks and neighbouring notes inside a single byte budget.
02
Finding the note you half remember
Search full text with fuzzy matching, then read only the section that matched.
03
Asking a question about the notes rather than in them
Filter on frontmatter properties, tag, folder and modified time — which drafts moved this week, what is due.
04
Adding to today's log
Resolve the daily note from the vault's own configuration, creating it from the template if it does not exist, then append.
05
Editing one section of a long note
Read the outline, then patch that section by heading or block reference without touching the rest of the file.
06
Renaming something without breaking links
Move the note or rename the heading and have every reference across the vault rewritten to match.
07
Seeing what points at this note
Read the backlinks from the reverse index with their source lines, and the note's own outgoing links.
08
Fixing a term everywhere it appears
Replace inside the body — regex if you need it — with a dry run first, and frontmatter untouched.
19 tools
Counted once with only startup setup. Other versions, modes or optional credentials may expose a different list.
append_periodic_note
Append text to a periodic note (daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, or yearly). Preserves existing frontmatter exactly. Creates the note first (from template if configured) when createIfMissing is true (default).
context_pack
Assemble everything needed to ANSWER a natural-language question in one call, under a strict byte budget (default 2048): ranked excerpts, linked neighbor notes (backlinks/outlinks) with one-line summaries, and follow-up source paths. Use search to locate notes and query_notes for metadata filters; use context_pack when you want answer-ready context without multiple round-trips. Empty excerpts with confidence "none" or "low" means the vault lacks coverage — do not infer content.
create_note
Create a new note at a vault-relative path. Optionally sets frontmatter and body content. Parent directories are created automatically. Fails if the note already exists unless overwrite is true (prevHash may guard the overwrite).
delete_note
Delete a note. By default it is moved to the vault .trash/ folder (recoverable by moving it back); pass permanent: true to remove it outright.
get_backlinks
Return every note that links to the target note, with the source line and an optional excerpt. Results come from the pre-built reverse-link index so this is a fast, pure index lookup. Sort order: source path ascending.
get_links
Return all outgoing wikilinks and embeds from a note. Each link is marked resolved (with target path) or unresolved. Duplicate targets are de-duplicated; results sorted by line number.
get_periodic_note
Get the path and existence status of a periodic note (daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, or yearly) for a given date. Reads folder/format config from .obsidian/daily-notes.json (daily) or the periodic-notes plugin data.json. Optionally creates the note from the configured template if it is missing.
list_notes
List notes, optionally filtered by folder prefix or tag.
list_tags
List all tags in the vault with usage counts. Supports substring filtering, minimum count threshold, and sort order. Nested tags (e.g. area/work) include a parent field.
move_note
Move or rename a note to a new vault-relative path, rewriting wikilinks and markdown links in other notes that point at it so nothing breaks (links inside fenced code blocks are left alone). Parent directories at the destination are created automatically. Fails if the destination already exists unless overwrite is true.
outline_note
Return a note's structure — heading tree with offsets, block-reference anchors, and frontmatter key list — without returning any prose. Use this before section reads or patches to discover what sections exist at a fraction of the cost of reading the full note.
patch_frontmatter
Set, update, or delete frontmatter keys without reordering existing keys or changing quote style. Pass null as a value to delete a key.
patch_note
Surgically edit a section of a note — targeted by heading or block reference — without rewriting the whole file. Operations: append (add after section), prepend (add after heading line), replace (swap section content). Frontmatter is never touched.
query_notes
Structured metadata query — filter notes by frontmatter key/value predicates, tag, folder, modified time, and size. Returns compact rows (path + title by default; opt into more via select), not note content. Use this instead of search when filtering by properties rather than text.
read_note
Read a note or a span of it — by heading section, block reference, or line range. Returns structured JSON with the content, bytes returned, total note size, and a contentHash to pass as prevHash to edit tools for compare-and-swap. Use search or outline_note first to find the right path and section names.
rename_heading
Rename a heading in a note and rewrite every [[note#heading]] wikilink and embed across the vault so references keep working — aliases preserved, fenced code blocks left alone. Served from the warm backlink index, no vault scan. Heading matching is case-insensitive; with duplicate headings the first match wins, mirroring Obsidian link resolution.
replace_in_note
Find and replace text within a note body. Supports literal and regex search, case sensitivity, whole-word matching, and a replacement limit. Frontmatter is never touched. Use dryRun to preview matches before writing.
search
Full-text search across the vault. Returns ranked excerpts (~200 chars) — not full notes — to minimise context usage. Supports fuzzy matching and prefix search.
BEFORE YOU INSTALL
What to know first
Tools you get
19 tools when we connected. SEEKSTONE_READ_ONLY=1 removes the nine write tools, leaving 10, and SEEKSTONE_WRITE_PATHS limits writes to globs you allow. search gains semantic and hybrid modes only with SEEKSTONE_SEMANTIC=1 and the model downloaded.
Requires
npx on PATH
Where it runs
All 4 documented clients run the server on your machine.
CONTEXT COST
Moderate Standing cost
Rated by the size of the 19 tool definitions that ride along on every turn, not by how many there are
INSTALLATION
Connect your client
Server setup
TERMINAL
npx -y seekstoneMCP Clients
Claude Desktop, Cursor
JSON
{
"mcpServers": {
"seekstone": {
"command": "npx",
"args": [
"-y",
"seekstone"
],
"env": {
"SEEKSTONE_VAULT": "<YOUR_SEEKSTONE_VAULT>"
}
}
}
}Claude Code
CLAUDE CODE · TERMINAL
claude mcp add seekstone --env SEEKSTONE_VAULT=<YOUR_SEEKSTONE_VAULT> -- npx -y seekstoneVS Code
VS CODE · JSON
{
"servers": {
"seekstone": {
"type": "stdio",
"command": "npx",
"args": [
"-y",
"seekstone"
],
"env": {
"SEEKSTONE_VAULT": "<YOUR_SEEKSTONE_VAULT>"
}
}
}
}
