Capture To Obsidian

Capture to Obsidian

Create durable Markdown notes without requiring the Obsidian application, a plugin, or an API. Prefer filesystem tools already available to the agent.

Select the workflow

1. Run Setup when the user asks to configure automatic capture or when no

capture directory is configured.

1. Run Capture when the user explicitly asks to record something, or when a

configured dedicated capture project treats messages without another task as notes.

1. Do not capture an explicit unrelated task unless the user also asks to record

it. If both are requested, complete both.

1. Treat an explicit instruction not to save or record as highest priority.

Setup

1. Look for an absolute capture directory in the current project's AGENTS.md

section delimited by capture-to-obsidian:start and capture-to-obsidian:end.

1. If none is configured, check only likely local locations; do not crawl the

user's whole home directory:

• a vault in the current workspace or its parents, identified by .obsidian;
• immediate child directories of the user's Documents folder that contain

.obsidian;

• on macOS, immediate vault directories under Obsidian's iCloud Documents

location.

1. If exactly one vault is found, use its existing Capture, Inbox, or

language-equivalent notes folder when unambiguous. Otherwise ask which folder inside that vault to use.

1. If no usable directory is found, ask one concise question in the user's

language. Offer these choices in natural prose:

• provide an existing Obsidian vault or notes-folder path;
• use the platform's default Documents/Obsidian Vault/Capture directory.

Do not continue until the user answers.

1. Expand and normalize the chosen path, confirm it is absolute, and create it

only after the user selected it or accepted the default. Confirm it is writable without deleting or replacing anything.

1. Copy the rules from assets/AGENTS.md.template into the current dedicated

project's AGENTS.md, replacing {{OBSIDIAN_CAPTURE_DIR}} with the absolute path. If AGENTS.md already exists, replace only an existing delimited capture section or append a new one; preserve all unrelated instructions.

1. Reply once in the user's language with the equivalent of:

"Setup complete. From now on, just drop any link, ID, or dictated message into this conversation and it will be recorded to Obsidian automatically."

Capture

Determine the source

• Before capturing dictated or noisy input, apply the core speech-fix rule:

use the full context to silently repair only high-confidence transcription errors while preserving the user's intent, viewpoint, and exact tokens; if $speech-fix is installed, invoke it first.

• Treat ordinary user text as the original note content.
• Treat phrases such as “save this link/ID” as capture requests, not unrelated

tasks.

• When the main input is a URL, UUID, long number, task/chat ID, document ID, or

similar resource identifier, do not use the identifier alone as the note body. First identify and read the resource with an available purpose-built tool, connector, browser, or local file reader.

• For a Codex task or chat, preserve the user's messages from the source in

chronological order. Exclude assistant replies unless the user explicitly requests them.

• For a webpage or third-party document, summarize the accessible content and

preserve its title and exact URL or identifier. Do not reproduce long copyrighted text; the user's own accompanying words remain the original content.

• If the resource cannot be identified or read, or the requested scope is

unclear, ask one concise question in the user's language instead of saving a meaningless identifier.

• Treat paths, URLs, IDs, names, dates, numbers, amounts, versions, code, and

quoted text as exact tokens. Do not silently correct them.

Prepare the note

1. Infer a specific title from the content. Keep it within 20 CJK characters or

about 8 words in space-separated languages.

1. Sanitize only filename-invalid characters and unsafe trailing characters;

preserve the human-readable title.

1. Use the user's local current time to the minute as YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm on the

first line.

1. Write a compact summary below the timestamp: no more than 300 CJK characters

or roughly 150 words in a space-separated language.

1. Preserve the user's substantive original content and order. Lightly fix only

high-confidence speech-recognition errors, punctuation, sentence breaks, repeated filler words, and broken formatting. Do not substantially polish, replace the original with a summary, omit meaningful content, add new ideas, or change the user's viewpoint.

1. For long input, divide the original naturally by topic and add descriptive

## headings. Do not force headings onto short input.

1. Apart from the summary, source details when applicable, and necessary

headings, add no tags, evaluation, advice, or commentary.

Use this layout:

YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm

Compact summary.

Source: exact URL or identifier, when applicable

## Descriptive section heading, only when useful

Lightly cleaned but substantively complete original content.

Write safely

1. Resolve the configured capture directory to an absolute path and verify it

still exists and is writable. If not, return to Setup.

1. Write .md without overwriting an existing file. If it exists, append

2, 3, and so on until the filename is unused.

1. Use a safe file-editing tool and preserve all other files.
2. Keep fetched data, protocol schemas, logs, and helper files out of both the

capture project and the Obsidian folder. Use a system temporary directory for unavoidable intermediates and remove them after extracting the needed text.

1. After a successful capture with no other requested output, reply with only a

clickable link to the created file. If the user also requested another task, include the link while returning that task's result.

Codex reliability

For automatic capture in Codex, configure a dedicated project with assets/AGENTS.md.template. Skill descriptions enable discovery, but project instructions provide the durable “every message” behavior. Other compatible agents may use the core workflow, but do not claim an integration is verified unless it has been tested.

Source & license

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

• Author: moyi-dong
• Source: moyi-dong/capture-to-obsidian
• License: MIT

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