Build an AI-Powered Knowledge Brain with Obsidian, Shopify's qmd, and Claude Code
Integrate tools from Obsidian's CEO and Shopify's CEO to turn Claude Code into a personal knowledge management agent that writes, searches, and connects your notes automatically.
Practical Summary
This workflow combines three key components to enhance Claude Code's ability to manage and query a personal knowledge base: Obsidian skills for writing and organizing notes, a local markdown search engine for fast retrieval, and a graph connector for grounding search results.
Why It Matters
This setup transforms a basic LLM wiki pattern into a fully functional, searchable knowledge graph, improving information retrieval and organization for researchers, developers, and anyone managing complex projects, potentially saving time and enhancing decision-making.
Step 1: Integrate Obsidian Skills with Claude Code
Download the official kepano/obsidian-skills repository from GitHub. Drop this into your Claude Code environment to enable the AI agent to write perfect Obsidian markdown, manage your vault structure, and automatically file sources into it. This teaches Claude Code how to interact with Obsidian as a knowledge base.
Step 2: Add a Local Search Engine for Fast Retrieval
Install tobi/qmd, a local markdown search engine built by Shopify's CEO. Configure it as an MCP (Model Context Protocol) server within your Claude Code setup. This allows Claude to quickly search and navigate large wikis without crawling every file, as recommended by Andrej Karpathy for efficient knowledge retrieval.
Step 3: Connect and Ground Your Knowledge Graph
Integrate safishamsi/graphify to link related pages within your Obsidian vault and keep search results grounded in your actual data. This completes the stack: Obsidian handles writing and organizing, qmd handles searching, and graphify ensures connections are maintained, enabling you to query your entire knowledge base in plain language.
Outcome: A Queryable Knowledge Graph
The final result is a connected graph of your projects, research, and workflows that you can query conversationally using Claude Code. This moves beyond a static note pile to an interactive 'second brain' that enhances information access and synthesis for practical tasks.