OpenClaw + Obsidian

Prerequisites

• OpenClaw running (see our deployment guide)
• Obsidian installed on your machine
• A vault you want to connect
• File system access to your vault folder

Step 1: Locate Your Vault

Obsidian stores notes as plain Markdown files. Find your vault location:

Windows:

C:\Users\[YourName]\Documents\Obsidian\[VaultName]

macOS:

/Users/[YourName]/Library/Mobile Documents/iCloud~md~obsidian/Documents/[VaultName]

Linux:

~/Documents/Obsidian/[VaultName]

Step 2: Configure OpenClaw

Add the Obsidian channel to your OpenClaw config:

# In your openclaw config
channels:
  obsidian:
    enabled: true
    vault_path: "/path/to/your/vault"

Or via environment variables in your docker-compose.yml:

environment:
  - OBSIDIAN_ENABLED=true
  - OBSIDIAN_VAULT_PATH=/vault
volumes:
  - /path/to/your/vault:/vault:ro

Note: Mount your vault as read-only (:ro) if you only want search capabilities.

Step 3: Restart OpenClaw

docker compose restart openclaw

Verification

Try asking OpenClaw to search your vault:

"Search my Obsidian vault for notes about 'meeting'"
"List all notes created this week"
"Find notes tagged with #project"

Check logs for file access:

docker compose logs -f openclaw | grep -i obsidian

Common Issues

Vault not found: Ensure the path is correct and the vault folder is mounted in Docker. Check permissions on the vault directory.

Permission denied: Make sure the OpenClaw container has read access to the mounted vault. On Linux, you may need to adjust folder permissions.

Notes not updating: If using iCloud sync on macOS, there may be delays. Open Obsidian to force sync, then retry.

Large vaults: For vaults with 10,000+ notes, initial indexing may take a few minutes. Subsequent searches are fast.