Master Obsidian: A Complete Guide to Local Knowledge Management and Plugins

Introduction

Obsidian is a local Markdown‑based knowledge‑management application. All notes are stored as plain .md files on the user's device, giving full data ownership.

Core concepts

Vault

A vault is a folder that contains all markdown notes and a hidden .obsidian configuration directory.

📁 MyVault/
├── 📁 Diary/
├── 📁 Projects/
├── 📁 Learning/
├── 📁 Attachments/
├── 📁 Templates/
└── 📁 .obsidian/   ← configuration folder

Markdown basics

Standard Markdown syntax is supported (headings, bold, italics, lists, blockquotes, inline code, fenced code blocks, tables, links).

# Heading 1
## Heading 2
### Heading 3

**Bold**
*Italic*
~~Strikethrough~~
> Blockquote

`inline code`

```python
print("Hello Obsidian")
```

| Header1 | Header2 |
|--------|--------|
| Cell1   | Cell2   |

Bidirectional links

Use double brackets to create links between notes. Advanced forms allow linking to headings, custom display text, or embedding content.

[[Project Plan]]
[[Meeting Notes#Decision]]
[[Long Note Title|Short]]
![[Another Note]]   ← embed note
![[image.png]]      ← embed image

Tags

Prefix a word with # to add a tag. Tags can be nested (e.g., #project/work).

#project
#todo
#reading-notes

YAML frontmatter

Place a YAML block at the top of a note between --- lines to store structured metadata.

---
date: 2026-04-05
tags:
  - Reading Note
  - Psychology
author: Daniel Kahneman
rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
status: Read
---

Installation

Download Obsidian from https://obsidian.md and install it on the target operating system.

Plugins

Claudian (Claude AI integration)

Install from the GitHub repository https://github.com/YishenTu/claudian. After enabling, set the required environment variables:

ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL=http://model.xx.ai.srv/anthropic
ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN=sk-...
ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_HAIKU_MODEL=claude-opus-4-6

Terminal plugin

Provides an embedded terminal to run shell commands directly inside Obsidian.

Importer plugin

Allows importing notes from other applications. Documentation: https://obsidian.md/help/plugins/importer.

Importing Skills

Obsidian Skills can be cloned from the OrbitOS repository:

# From the vault directory
cd C:\Users\11437\Documents\Obsidian Vault
npx degit MarsWang42/OrbitOS/EN OrbitOS-vault

Available skills include:

Start My Day – daily plan generator.

Kickoff – turn ideas into projects.

Research – AI deep‑dive.

Brainstorm – idea generation.

AI Newsletter – automatic AI news aggregation.

Practical workflows

Automated AI newsletter

Running the ai-newsletter command fetches the day’s AI highlights and inserts them into the daily plan.

Turning ideas into executable projects

Record a vague idea such as “write an Obsidian tutorial”. Execute the Kickoff skill to expand it into a structured project with tasks, resources, and timelines.