Vault query

Skill quietdaemon/starter-skills/skills/vault-query

Free, MIT-licensed starter skills for a private, self-hosted AI assistant — back itself up, capture ideas, search your notes, self-reflect. Built to adapt, not just copy. The free funnel for the quietdaemon guide + kit.

Install

npx -y skills add quietdaemon/starter-skills --skill vault-query

Assembled from the repository path, not quoted from the project. Check it against their README if it does not work.

One thing to look at

0 stars0 stars. Stars are a popularity signal and not a quality one, but at this level it is likely that nobody has read this closely except its author, and you would be relying on your own review.

What its author says it does

Copied from the file, not written here

Search a local Markdown / Obsidian 'second brain' vault via an MCP filesystem server, with freshness and search-scope gotchas handled. Use when the user asks about their notes, knowledge base, documented decisions, references, or 'what do I know about X?'

The file declares its own license as MIT. That is the author’s claim about this one file, and it is not the same thing as the license GitHub reports for the repository, which is listed with the other numbers below.

SKILL.md

3.4 KB, as published. Nobody here has run it

Vault Query

Give your assistant read access to a personal Markdown vault (Obsidian or plain .md files) through an MCP filesystem server, and let it actually find and surface what's in there. The hard-won part isn't the search call — it's the two failure modes below that make searches silently come back empty.

Setup

Run an MCP filesystem server scoped to your vault, e.g.:

# in your agent's MCP config
vault_filesystem:
  command: npx
  args: ["-y", "@modelcontextprotocol/server-filesystem", "<VAULT_PATH>"]

This exposes mcp_vault_filesystem_* tools (read/search/list). If your vault is a git clone kept fresh by a pull cron, see Step 0.

When to activate

The user asks about:

Their notes, wiki, or anything they've documented
Concepts, frameworks, protocols, references, sources
People, places, or entities they track
Their decision log, action items, priorities
"What do I know about X?" / "Pull up my notes on Y"

How to query

Step 0 — Check freshness FIRST (if the vault is a git clone)

If the user writes to the vault from other machines, your local copy is only as fresh as the last pull. Before concluding something isn't there:

cd <VAULT_PATH> && git fetch origin && git log --oneline origin/main -5

If origin/main is ahead, pull before searching:

git pull --rebase origin main

This is the single most common cause of a false "I couldn't find it."

Step 1 — Locate files

mcp_vault_filesystem_search_files with a glob pattern (e.g. *labs*) and the vault path. ⚠️ This matches FILENAMES, not file contents.

Step 2 — Content search fallback

When the term lives inside a page (not in its filename), glob search misses it. Use grep:

grep -ril "keyword" <VAULT_PATH>/

Step 3 — Read + answer

mcp_vault_filesystem_read_file on the 2–3 most relevant hits, then answer in your own words from the content.

Always surface the actual findings. Deliver the specific entries / values / dates / names — don't just say "I found it." A lookup the user never sees the result of is worthless.

Pitfalls (the reason this skill exists)

Stale cache is the #1 false-empty. Run the Step 0 git fetch every time the vault is a synced clone, not only when something looks missing.
MCP glob search ≠ content search. search_files matches filename patterns only. For words inside files, use grep -ril.
Filesystem search is case-sensitive on Linux. *Protocols* and *protocols* can return different results — prefer lowercase unless you know the casing.
Don't over-read. On a broad hit, read the top 2–3 files, not everything.
Mind privacy scope. Only point the MCP server at directories you intend the assistant to read; it can read everything in scope.