obsidian-git-mcp

An MCP server for git-backed Obsidian vaults. Every write an AI collaborator makes becomes a validated, attributed git commit pushed to the vault's canonical remote — or it doesn't happen at all.

What does it do?

• Wraps MCPVault in-process for the vault tool surface: search, read, create, patch, frontmatter, and tags.
• Runs every write as a git transaction: lock, verify the checkout is clean, fetch, fast-forward to the remote, apply the change, validate it, commit, push, and return the commit SHA.
• Rolls the checkout back to its pre-transaction state when any step fails, so a failed write leaves nothing behind.
• Refuses conflicting concurrent edits instead of guessing a merge. A push race with a non-conflicting remote commit retries a bounded number of times; an actual conflict stops immediately.
• Attributes each commit to the collaborator that made it, so git log --author=ChatGPT is the audit trail. The service itself stays the committer.
• Adds the git-aware tools MCPVault doesn't have: vault_status, list_recent_changes, and append_to_section.
• Ships destructive tools (delete_note, move_note) disabled by default, and denies .obsidian/ writes and path traversal at both the path-filter and transaction layers.

Why create this?

My vault's main branch on GitHub is the canonical copy of my second brain, and AI collaborators read and write it directly. The existing git-flavored vault MCP servers either treat the local checkout as a disposable cache the remote overwrites, or batch writes on a debounce timer and push whenever — which means a concurrent edit can silently vanish, and a "successful" write may never reach the remote. That's not acceptable for a vault that multiple agents and my own devices sync against, so this server makes git the transaction boundary: a write either lands as a pushed, attributed, validated commit, or the checkout rolls back and the caller is told why.

Running it

Point the server at a normal git clone of your vault (never your live Obsidian directory — the checkout is the server's workspace and it will hard-reset it to the remote when recovering from a crash):

obsidian-git-mcp /path/to/vault-checkout

The server speaks MCP over stdio. Configuration comes from environment variables:

Variable	Default	Purpose
OGM_COLLABORATOR	(required)	Name recorded as the git author of every write
OGM_COLLABORATOR_EMAIL	derived from the name	Email recorded as the git author
OGM_SERVICE_NAME	obsidian-git-mcp	Name recorded as the git committer
OGM_SERVICE_EMAIL	service@obsidian-git-mcp.local	Email recorded as the git committer
OGM_BRANCH	main	Branch the transaction wrapper syncs and pushes
OGM_REMOTE	origin	Remote the transaction wrapper fetches and pushes
OGM_ALLOW_DESTRUCTIVE	unset	Set to 1 to expose delete_note and move_note

Example Claude Code registration:

claude mcp add vault -e OGM_COLLABORATOR="Claude Code" -- obsidian-git-mcp /path/to/vault-checkout

Status

Phase 1 spike: the contract-test suite and transaction wrapper are being built TDD-first to decide whether MCPVault stays the underlying tool surface. The verdict and its rationale will be recorded here.