properties

Obsidian Properties Management

When to Use This Skill

Use this skill when...	Use the alternative instead when...
Reading, setting, or removing a single YAML property on a live note via the running CLI	Doing offline bulk frontmatter rewrites across many files — use vault-frontmatter
Updating status:, tags:, or aliases: on a note Obsidian currently has open	Editing note body content rather than frontmatter — use vault-files
Confirming a property change is reflected in Obsidian's metadata cache	Repairing broken wikilinks after a rename — use vault-wikilinks

Read, set, and remove YAML frontmatter properties on Obsidian notes using the official CLI.

Prerequisites

• Obsidian desktop v1.12.4+ with CLI enabled
• Obsidian must be running

When to Use

Use this skill automatically when:

• User wants to read or inspect note metadata/frontmatter
• User needs to set, update, or add properties to notes
• User wants to remove properties from notes
• User asks about note status, tags, dates, or custom fields
• User needs to manage aliases on notes

Core Operations

Read Properties

# Read all properties from a note
obsidian properties file="Project Spec"

# JSON output for parsing
obsidian properties file="Project Spec" format=json

Set Properties

# Set a text property
obsidian properties:set file="Note" status=active

# Set a date property
obsidian properties:set file="Note" due=2026-03-15 type=date

# Set multiple properties
obsidian properties:set file="Note" status=draft priority=high

# Set tags property
obsidian properties:set file="Note" tags="blog,publish" type=tags

Remove Properties

# Remove a single property
obsidian properties:remove file="Note" key=draft

# Remove multiple properties
obsidian properties:remove file="Note" key=old_field

Property Types

Type	Example	Notes
Text	status=active	Default type
Date	due=2026-03-15 type=date	ISO 8601 format
Tags	tags="a,b" type=tags	Comma-separated
Number	priority=1	Numeric values
Boolean	published=true	true/false
List	aliases="Name1,Name2" type=tags	Comma-separated

Common Patterns

Status Workflow

# Set draft status
obsidian properties:set file="Post" status=draft

# Move to review
obsidian properties:set file="Post" status=review

# Mark published
obsidian properties:set file="Post" status=published published=true

Alias Management

# Add aliases for wikilink resolution
obsidian properties:set file="JavaScript" aliases="JS,js,ECMAScript" type=tags

Agentic Optimizations

Context	Command
Read properties (structured)	obsidian properties file="X" format=json
Set property	obsidian properties:set file="X" key=value
Remove property	obsidian properties:remove file="X" key=field
Typed property	obsidian properties:set file="X" field=val type=date

Related Skills

• vault-files — Read and create notes
• search-discovery — Search by property values with [key:value] syntax