taproot_plantLABSCO SUMMARY
Your vault as the assistant's working memory.
Notes go in from anywhere and come back as cited answers, and every answer can be written back, so the vault compounds instead of staying a pile of clippings. It reads the folder structure and wikilink conventions you already use rather than imposing its own.
What it is
An MCP server that gives Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor or Windsurf read and write access to an Obsidian vault, sandboxed to that directory. It ships on npm as synapse-obsidian and presents itself as Taproot: nine taproot_ tools for the knowledge-base workflow and six garden_ tools for direct file access. The vault is just a folder of markdown, so Obsidian does not need to be running.
What you get
- A guided first run that scans the vault and offers three routes — use the structure you already have, scaffold a knowledge base, or describe your own — then saves the answer (
taproot_plant,taproot_till,taproot_sow) - Anything saved into the vault from anywhere: hand it a URL and the page is fetched, converted to markdown and filed (
taproot_seed) - Raw sources turned into summaries, concept pages and entity pages, cross-linked with wikilinks — one at a time or every unprocessed source at once (
taproot_water,taproot_cultivate) - A question researched across the whole knowledge base, answered with citations (
taproot_harvest) - A full vault overview with suggested next actions, and a health check for broken links, orphan pages, missing frontmatter and stale content (
taproot_status,taproot_prune) - Direct file access underneath all of it: read a file, create or update one, list a directory, full-text search, count files, read a file's YAML metadata (
garden_read,garden_plant,garden_survey,garden_forage,garden_measure,garden_tag) - A
--httpmode so a browser-based client can reach a vault on your own machine through a tunnel
Requirements
Node.js 18 or newer, and the path to your vault — or any folder of markdown — passed as an argument to npx -y synapse-obsidian. For Claude.ai or ChatGPT, run it with --http --port 3777 and expose it through a tunnel, then add the tunnel's /mcp URL as a custom integration. Access is sandboxed to the vault directory and nothing outside it.
Setup effort
One command — npx -y synapse-obsidian <YOUR_PATH_TO_OBSIDIAN_VAULT>
USE CASES
01
Saving something to read later, from your phone
Send the URL to whichever AI client you have open. The page is fetched, converted to markdown and filed in the vault, so the thing you found on a train is in your notes by the time you sit down.
02
Asking your own notes a question
Ask what your notes say about a topic and get an answer synthesised across the relevant files, with citations back to them. The citation is the part that matters — it is how you tell recall from invention.
03
Turning a pile of clippings into a wiki
Process every unprocessed source in one go. Each becomes a summary plus the concept and entity pages it implies, cross-linked with wikilinks, so the next question has somewhere to land.
04
Using the vault you already have
The first run detects your folder structure, wikilinks and naming conventions and adapts to them — nothing is moved or overwritten. If you would rather start clean, it can scaffold sources, notes and outputs folders instead.
05
Finding the rot before it spreads
Run a health check for broken links, orphan pages, missing frontmatter and stale content, and let it fix what it can. A vault that has grown for two years has all four.
15 tools
Listed in project docs. Your client may show a different list.
taproot_tilltaproot_seedtaproot_statustaproot_watertaproot_cultivatetaproot_harvesttaproot_prunetaproot_sowgarden_readgarden_plantgarden_surveygarden_foragegarden_measuregarden_tagBEFORE YOU INSTALL
What to know first
Tools you get
15 tools named in the project's documentation.
Requires
npx on PATH
INSTALLATION
Connect your client
Server setup
TERMINAL
npx -y synapse-obsidian <YOUR_PATH_TO_OBSIDIAN_VAULT>MCP Clients
Claude Desktop
CLAUDE DESKTOP · JSON
{
"mcpServers": {
"taproot": {
"command": "npx",
"args": [
"-y",
"synapse-obsidian",
"<YOUR_PATH_TO_OBSIDIAN_VAULT>"
]
}
}
}Claude Code
CLAUDE CODE · JSON
{
"mcpServers": {
"taproot": {
"command": "npx",
"args": [
"-y",
"synapse-obsidian",
"<YOUR_PATH_TO_VAULT>"
]
}
}
}Any MCP client
ANY MCP CLIENT · TERMINAL
npx synapse-obsidian <YOUR_PATH_TO_VAULT> --http --port 3777
