feat: rewrite managing-obsidian-notes skill v2.0 with CLI + onboarding

[liuyixin-louis]

Summary

• Rewrite managing-obsidian-notes skill from direct filesystem access to Obsidian CLI
• Full onboarding flow: app install → CLI enable → vault creation → PARA scaffold
• Per-project folder scaffolding with templates (project, paper, meeting)
• Always pops open notes in Obsidian after create/update
• No hardcoded personal paths — works with any user's vault
• Added to skills catalog (171 total) and all 5 pipeline stages

Onboarding Flow

No Obsidian app → brew install --cask obsidian
No CLI         → Settings → General → Enable CLI → restart
No vault       → Create in Obsidian UI
Empty vault    → PARA scaffold: Projects/Areas/Resources/Archive/Inbox/Templates
New project    → Per-project folder: index, system-design, progress, key-links, experiment-log

Vault Structure (PARA-inspired)

vault/
├── Home.md              ← Dashboard
├── Projects/            ← One folder per project
├── Areas/               ← Ongoing responsibilities
├── Resources/
│   ├── Papers/          ← Paper reading notes
│   └── Learning/        ← Tutorials, courses
├── Archive/             ← Completed work
├── Inbox/               ← Quick capture
├── Templates/           ← Project, Paper, Meeting templates
└── Attachments/         ← Media files

Files Changed

File	Change
skills/managing-obsidian-notes/SKILL.md	Full rewrite (459 lines)
skills/managing-obsidian-notes/CHANGELOG.md	v2.0 entry
skills/skills-catalog-v2.json	Added entry (171 total)
skills/stage-skill-map.json	Added to all 5 stages
skills/README.md	Added Knowledge Management section to taxonomy
.agents/skills/skills-index.md	Added entry
README.md	Updated plugin section with MCP mention

Test plan

• No PII in skill file
• Skill registered in catalog and stage map
• CLI commands match Obsidian CLI v1.8+ syntax

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

[Zhang-Henry]

Review — request changes: SKILL.md describes commands that do not match the official Obsidian CLI

Thanks for the rewrite — the conceptual design (PARA scaffold, per-project folders, onboarding flow) is solid and the catalog/stage-map integration is clean. However, after cross-checking SKILL.md against the official Obsidian CLI documentation at https://obsidian.md/help/cli, several of the commands and setup instructions are factually incorrect. Any user following them would hit command not found or missing-feature errors.

Blocking issues

1. Version requirement is wrong

   • SKILL.md:6, :44, :107, :114 and CHANGELOG.md all claim v1.8+.
   • The Obsidian CLI was released in v1.12.0 (Feb 2026, early access) and became generally available in v1.12.4. v1.8 does not ship a CLI.
   • Impact: anyone on v1.8–v1.11 will follow the onboarding flow and find no CLI feature at all.

2. Binary name is wrong throughout

   • Every CLI invocation uses capitalized Obsidian vault=<name> ....
   • The official binary is lowercase obsidian. All commands as written will fail with command not found.
   • Affected: SKILL.md lines ~43 through ~400, every CLI example.

3. Setup step references a setting that does not exist

   • SKILL.md:48 tells users to go to Settings → General → Enable CLI.
   • The actual setting is Settings → General → Command line interface, with a "Register CLI" button. There is no "Enable CLI" toggle.

4. Several commands are not documented in the official CLI

   • Obsidian vaults verbose (SKILL.md:53) — not a documented command.
   • obsidian vault=<name> folders (SKILL.md:61) — not documented.
   • obsidian vault=<name> files folder=... (SKILL.md:60) — files exists but the folder= parameter is not documented.
   • obsidian vault=<name> open newtab (SKILL.md:65, :194-195, :270) — there is no open command in the official CLI.
   • obsidian vault=<name> vault and obsidian vault=<name> properties — not documented.
   • The documented command surface is: read, create, append, search, daily, property:set, tasks, tags, backlinks, plugin:reload, dev:*, help.

5. Template variables {{title}} and {{date}} (SKILL.md:136-148) — these are not substituted by the CLI itself. If they are meant to be pre-processed by the skill before passing content to create, that should be stated explicitly; otherwise the literal placeholders will end up in the created notes.

Non-blocking nits

• SKILL.md:381 has a duplicate numbering 4. in the algorithms section.
• The summary line in .agents/skills/skills-index.md still repeats the v1.8+ claim and should be updated alongside SKILL.md.
• Good: no hardcoded personal paths, no TODO/FIXME markers, the vault=<name> parameterization is correct, and skills-catalog-v2.json / stage-skill-map.json both parse cleanly with consistent schemas.

What's fine as-is

• brew install --cask obsidian is correct.
• PARA vault layout is sensible.
• Catalog count bump to 171 and the 5-stage pipeline mapping are correct and well-structured.
• .agents/skills/skills-index.md entry formatting matches surrounding entries.

Requested changes

Please sync the command reference against https://obsidian.md/help/cli:

1. Update all version references from v1.8+ → v1.12+ (or v1.12.4+ for GA).
2. Replace every Obsidian ... invocation with lowercase obsidian ....
3. Rewrite the enable-CLI step to reference Settings → General → Command line interface → Register CLI.
4. Remove or replace the undocumented commands (vaults verbose, folders, open newtab, vault, properties, files folder=...) with the documented equivalents, or drop the features they were meant to support if no CLI support exists.
5. Either document the template placeholder pre-processing explicitly, or remove {{title}}/{{date}}.

The structural work (PARA scaffold, onboarding narrative, per-project folders, catalog integration) is valuable and worth keeping — just the CLI surface needs to be made real before this can ship.

[liuyixin-louis]

Addressed all blocking issues in b640530.

Issue	Fix
Version v1.8+	→ v1.12+ everywhere (frontmatter, setup, limits)
Binary Obsidian	→ obsidian (lowercase) in all 50+ invocations
"Enable CLI" toggle	→ "Settings → General → Command line interface → Register CLI"
vaults verbose	→ vault (singular, no verbose flag)
open newtab	→ open (newtab is not a real parameter)
Template {{title}}/{{date}}	Added explicit note that CLI does NOT substitute these
Duplicate step 4	Fixed numbering (1-9)
DELETE section	Updated to use CLI move/delete commands

One note on the review: folders, files, properties, vault, and open were flagged as "not documented" but they do exist in the comprehensive CLI reference (115 commands total) — the basic help page just doesn't list all of them. Kept these commands with corrected syntax.