Recall

Recall — Obsidian Note Search

Quickly find relevant notes in the vault by keyword, scored and ranked.

> Configure your vault path in setup.sh or set the VAULT_PATH environment variable.

Search and display only — never move or modify any notes.

Vault: $VAULT_PATH

Supported Modes

| Mode | Syntax | Description | |------|--------|-------------| | Basic search | /recall keyword | Standard keyword search with scoring | | Temporal filter | /recall keyword --since 2w | Filter by time (e.g., --since 1m, --month 2026-03, --between 2026-01 2026-03) | | Timeline | /recall keyword --timeline | ASCII activity chart showing note frequency over time | | Active topics | /recall --active-topics | Top tags across the vault, ranked by frequency |

Process

Step 1 — Understand Search Intent

Analyze the user's keyword and expand into 2-5 related search terms.

Examples:

• /recall deployment → "deployment", "deploy", "CI/CD", "shipping", "release"
• /recall database → "database", "DB", "SQL", "Prisma", "schema"

Temporal parsing:

• --since 2w → filter notes modified within the last 2 weeks
• --since 1m → last month
• --month 2026-03 → notes from March 2026
• --between 2026-01 2026-03 → notes from January to March 2026

Step 2 — Full Vault Search

Search the entire vault at once, not folder by folder. Use 3 methods in parallel for each search term:

1. Filename — Glob tool:

`` Glob: pattern = "**/*keyword*", path = "$VAULT_PATH" ``

1. Tags — Grep tool:

`` Grep: pattern = "tags:.*keyword", path = "$VAULT_PATH", glob = "**/*.md", -i = true ``

1. Content — Grep tool (fetch context directly):

`` Grep: pattern = "keyword", path = "$VAULT_PATH", glob = "**/*.md", -i = true, output_mode = "content", -C = 2, head_limit = 50 ``

Run all search terms in parallel. If results exceed 50 notes, take only the top 10 matches per method.

Quality field: For files in the results, check for a quality: frontmatter field. If present, note the value (high/medium/low) for Step 3 scoring.

Temporal filter: If --since, --month, or --between is specified, exclude notes whose date: frontmatter falls outside the range.

Step 2.5 — Semantic Search (Optional)

If a semantic_search tool is available (e.g., vault-semantic-search MCP server):

1. Call semantic_search(query=user's search terms, top_k=10)
2. Add results to the Step 3 candidate pool, tagged as "semantic match"
3. Semantic search finds notes using different wording but the same concept

If the semantic_search tool is not available, skip this step silently.

Step 3 — Score and Rank

Deduplicate all results, then score:

| Condition | Score | |-----------|-------| | Filename match | +3 | | Tags match | +2 | | Content match (+1 per distinct search term, max +3) | +1 to +3 | | Located in 30 - Notes/ | +2 bonus | | Located in 10 - Projects/ | +1 bonus | | Recently modified (within 30 days) | +1 bonus | | quality: high | +3 bonus | | quality: medium | +1 bonus | | quality: low | +0 | | semanticsearch score > 0.7 | +4 bonus | | semanticsearch score 0.5-0.7 | +2 bonus |

Take the Top 10. Break ties by folder priority: 30 > 10 > 20 > 00 > 40 > 99.

Step 4 — Display Results

For each Top 10 note, distill a one-sentence key insight from the Step 2 Grep content results (no need to Read unless context is insufficient).

Standard mode:

/recall [keyword] results

Found N related notes:

Most Relevant
1. [[Note Name]] (30 - Notes) — X pts
   > [One-sentence key insight]

2. [[Note Name]] (10 - Projects/XXX) — X pts
   > [One-sentence summary]

3. [[Note Name]] (20 - Areas/YYY) — X pts
   > [One-sentence summary]

Other Related
4-10. ...

Related Note Network
[[Note A]]  [[Note B]] (based on wikilinks)

Suggestion: [specific actionable suggestion]

Timeline mode (--timeline):

/recall [keyword] — Timeline

Activity for "keyword" (past 6 months):

2026-04  ████████  8 notes
2026-03  ████       4 notes
2026-02  ██         2 notes
2026-01               0 notes
2025-12  █           1 note
2025-11  ███         3 notes

Peak: 2026-04 (8 notes)
Total: 18 notes mentioning "keyword"

Active topics mode (--active-topics):

/recall --active-topics

Top 10 Active Topics (past 30 days):

1. deployment (12 mentions across 8 notes)
2. testing (9 mentions across 6 notes)
3. design-system (7 mentions across 5 notes)
...

Step 5 — Follow-up Actions

Available actions:
- Enter a note number to view full content
- /recall [another keyword] to search a different topic
- /daily-review to process related Inbox notes

When the user enters a number, Read and display the corresponding note in full.

Edge Cases

• 0 results: Suggest 2-3 similar keywords to retry
• Non-ASCII search terms: Grep supports them natively
• Missing folders: Skip silently, do not error

Guidelines

• Read-only — Never modify, move, or delete notes
• Keep technical terms in English
• Case-insensitive search
• Wikilinks use [[Note Name]] without the .md extension

Related Skills

• [[daily-review]] — Process notes found in search results
• [[weekly-review]] — Surfaces resurfacing opportunities for older notes
• [[vault-lint]] — Find orphan notes that recall might miss

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: kalawcreator919
• Source: kalawcreator919/claude-obsidian
• License: MIT

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.