Migrating from the aaronsb Obsidian MCP plugin¶
If you were using aaronsb/obsidian-mcp-plugin as your Claude connector: obsidian-brain replaces it entirely. Three quick differences:
- Works without Obsidian running (aaronsb requires Obsidian + a plugin inside it).
- No Local REST API plugin required.
- Chunk-level semantic search with RRF hybrid retrieval (aaronsb only has keyword FTS).
Three-step swap¶
- Remove aaronsb's block from your MCP client config and add obsidian-brain's. See Install in your MCP client.
- Disable the plugin in Obsidian (Settings → Community plugins → toggle off). Uninstall BRAT too if you don't beta-test other plugins.
- Quit Claude Desktop (⌘Q) and relaunch.
Feature equivalents¶
Three features live inside a running Obsidian process; if you want those, install the optional companion plugin:
| aaronsb feature | obsidian-brain equivalent |
|---|---|
| Active editor / cursor awareness | active_note (via companion plugin) |
| Dataview DQL queries | dataview_query (via companion plugin + Dataview community plugin) |
| Obsidian Bases queries | base_query (via companion plugin + core Bases plugin) |
Inline Dataview key:: value fields are parsed into searchable frontmatter with or without the plugin.