Connect Obsidian to Claude—without starting with your real vault.

Know what you are granting.

MCP is a standard that lets an AI application call tools exposed by another system. In this tutorial the tool can read, create, edit, move and delete Markdown notes inside the vault path you configure.

The community connector used here explicitly recommends a backup because it is in active development and may be granted write access. Review its current source, releases and issues before connecting anything important.

Make a disposable sample vault.

Create a new folder called MeetingProof-Sample-Vault somewhere easy to find. Open that folder as a new Obsidian vault. Do not point the first test at your existing notes.

Create three Markdown files:

MeetingProof-Sample-Vault/
├── Inbox.md
├── Project Northstar.md
└── Meetings/
    └── 2026-07-20 Weekly Review.md

Put harmless synthetic text in the weekly review:

# Weekly review

Decision: Keep the governance meeting on 24 July.
Action: Priya will circulate the revised evidence pack.
Question: Who owns the cost sensitivity?

If you later connect a real vault, first confirm that it is backed up with Obsidian Sync, Git, Time Machine or another recovery method you have tested.

Check Node and the connector source.

The connector currently requires Node.js 20 or newer.

node --version
npm --version

Open the connector repository and read its warning, available tools and recent issue activity. The important tools include reading, searching, creating, editing, moving and deleting notes. Do not treat an MCP package name as a security review.

Give Claude only the sample-vault path.

Find the absolute path to the sample vault:

# macOS or Linux
cd "/path/to/MeetingProof-Sample-Vault"
pwd

Open the Claude Desktop configuration file:

• macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
• Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json

Add the server, replacing the example path with the absolute sample-vault path:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "obsidian-sample": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "obsidian-mcp",
        "/absolute/path/to/MeetingProof-Sample-Vault"
      ]
    }
  }
}

If the file already contains another server, merge the new object carefully and keep the JSON valid. Restart Claude Desktop completely after saving.

Prove the boundary with read-only tasks first.

Ask Claude to perform three narrow tests:

1. List the notes available in the obsidian-sample vault. Do not modify anything.
2. Read Project Northstar.md and cite the filename. Do not modify anything.
3. Search for "governance meeting". Return filenames and matching lines only.

Confirm that Claude can see the sample vault and cannot see unrelated folders. Review every requested tool action before allowing it.

Make one reversible write to the Inbox.

Use a constrained prompt:

Read Meetings/2026-07-20 Weekly Review.md.

Draft a follow-up containing the explicit decision, action and
open question. Show me the exact Markdown first.

Do not write anything until I approve the draft.
After approval, append only to Inbox.md. Do not edit or delete
any other file.

Inspect the draft, approve the single append action, then open Inbox.md in Obsidian and verify the result. Delete the appended test manually to prove your recovery path.

Remove the connection when the test is over.

Close Claude Desktop, remove the obsidian-sample entry from claude_desktop_config.json, save valid JSON and restart Claude. Confirm that the Obsidian tools are no longer available.

Deleting the sample vault does not remove the connector configuration. Removing the configuration does not delete notes. Treat these as two separate cleanup steps.