Evergreen guides I've refreshed most recently — kept current, not left to rot.
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qmd gives you local hybrid search, MCP servers let any AI client query your vault, and a few rules in AGENTS.md make agents search in the right order. This is my setup, with the commands, the schedule and the upkeep it needs.
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AI search adds meaning to keyword search, and it works best on top of good structure. I explain how keyword, semantic, hybrid and agentic search differ, why coding agents search with grep, and how to test any tool with 20 of your own queries.
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Core Obsidian covers a lot, but it has real gaps. These are the plugins I recommend to fill them (Omnisearch, Quick Switcher++, Notebook Navigator and more), grouped by job, with what to check before you install each one.
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You don't need to start over. Measure how well search works today, then fix what you actually search for, one layer at a time, 15 minutes a day.
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File Recovery, Sync history and git bring back what you deleted. The Obsidian CLI gives scripts and AI agents Obsidian's own index. And when search misses a note you know exists, six checks, in order, find the cause.
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Findability is decided when you write a note. Explicit titles, aliases, a note type, a few properties and separate tag families do more for search than any plugin.
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My new ebook on finding any note in Obsidian is out. All of its text is free on this blog over the next two and a half weeks; the book gives you all of it today, in one book, with a foreword, exercises, a merged FAQ and a cheat sheet appendix.
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Most searches in your vault are re-finding searches; you wrote the note, now you want it back. This overview tells you which tool to reach for, compares them all, and points to the 12 parts that go deep. Based on a 30,000-note vault.
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People navigate first and search as a last resort, and they re-find notes through the cues they stored when they wrote them. Here's the research behind that, and the three models I use to design a findable vault.
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Your vault is a folder of Markdown files, so ripgrep, fzf, Raycast, git and Google can search it with Obsidian closed. When to leave the app, and the commands I use on my 30,000-note vault.
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People mostly re-find things by orienteering, one small step at a time from something they know. Backlinks, the local graph, self-maintaining Maps of Content, project hubs and bookmarks are the Obsidian tools for that walk.
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The quick switcher opens notes by name, the Search view finds them by content, and Bases answer questions about dates, links and properties. Here's how to use each one, including the operators that don't exist.
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