Obsidian Vault

In short: “Vault” is Obsidian’s term for a collection of notes – technically simply a folder full of Markdown files plus an .obsidian subfolder with configuration and plugins.

In more detail: Because a vault consists only of Markdown files, it can also be edited entirely without the Obsidian app (e.g. directly in the file system via Claude Code). Only for “live” functions – backlinks, the active file, querying tags live – do you need a way to talk to the running app itself. That’s what the MCP plugin is for.

Our context: Your vault lives under D:\Random_Zeug\Claude-Obsidian\Claude – the actual vault root is the Claude subfolder, not Claude-Obsidian itself, recognisable by the .obsidian folder inside it.

In Depth

Structure of the .obsidian folder

The .obsidian folder contains, among other things, app.json (general settings), appearance.json (theme/font), community-plugins.json (list of installed plugins) as well as a separate subfolder per plugin with its configuration. Because these are all plain JSON files, a vault (including plugin configuration) can in principle be versioned with Git and synchronised between devices — although some plugin data (e.g. local caches) is usually deliberately excluded via .gitignore, since it’s rebuilt per device anyway and would only needlessly increase the repo size.

Plain text as a design principle

The important conceptual point: a vault is deliberately NOT a proprietary database file but a completely normal folder with plain-text Markdown files — notes therefore stay readable/editable even without the Obsidian app itself (e.g. with any text editor, or as here directly via Claude Code on the file system), and moving a vault is, in the simplest case, nothing more than copying a folder. This design principle deliberately sets Obsidian apart from many other note-taking apps (e.g. Evernote or OneNote), which store notes in their own, often proprietary container formats or exclusively in the cloud — with Obsidian the user remains the full owner of the raw data at all times, without an export step and without the risk of losing access if the service is discontinued.

Wikilinks and the backlink graph

Within the Markdown files, Obsidian uses an extended syntax ([[Note title]]) for internal links between notes — when a note is opened, Obsidian automatically shows all other notes that link to it (“backlinks”), without this having to be maintained manually. The totality of all links creates a relationship graph between notes, which Obsidian can also display visually — this principle (a network of cross-referencing notes instead of rigid folder hierarchies) shapes the idea of a “digital garden” or the “Zettelkasten” method on which Obsidian’s basic concept is built.

Extensibility via plugins

Obsidian’s actual range of functions comes largely from community plugins, not from the core function itself — the core function is essentially “display and link Markdown files”. Plugins such as the MCP Connector plugin extend this with entirely new capabilities (here: a locally running MCP server through which external programs such as Claude Code can communicate with the running app), without the vault itself or its file format changing as a result.

See also: MCP (Model Context Protocol)