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Vault Cortex

Standalone MCP server for Obsidian vaults — hybrid search, notes & files, memory, tasks, OAuth 2.1

TypeScript CloudLocal
★ 20 stars Last pushed 2026-09-24 License: MIT

Topics: Knowledge & Memory

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Review any command before running it. Package names and URLs come from the server's own registry entry.

Package (oci)

Package: oci ghcr.io/aliasunder/vault-cortex:0.54.2

  • MCP_AUTH_TOKEN required secret — Bearer token for MCP client authentication. Must match the Authorization header sent by clients. Generate with: openssl rand -hex 32
  • PUBLIC_URL — Public URL clients use to reach this server. Used as the OAuth issuer URL in discovery metadata. Override when exposing the server outside localhost or on a non-default port.
  • EMBEDDING_ENABLED — Enable or disable the embedding pipeline. When false, no ONNX model is downloaded, no vector tables are created, and search uses FTS5 only.
  • RERANK_MODE — Cross-encoder reranking mode: blended (position-aware score blending after RRF fusion) or none (skip reranking). Only takes effect when EMBEDDING_ENABLED is true.
  • WINDOWS_MODE — Windows bind-mount mode: enables filesystem polling for the file watcher and rename-based moves across the Docker Desktop/WSL2 bridge. Set to true when the vault lives on a Windows drive.
  • MEMORY_ENABLED — Enable or disable the structured memory layer. When false, memory tools are hidden, bootstrap is skipped, and server metadata omits memory references.
  • FILE_TOOLS_ENABLED — Enable or disable file tools (vault_read_file, vault_list_files). When false, file tools are hidden and server metadata omits file tool references.
  • READONLY_MODE — Run the server read-only: every vault-writing tool is hidden, the memory folder is not auto-created, and server metadata omits write references.
  • DISABLED_TOOLS — Hide individual tools by name, comma-separated. Subtractive only — it cannot re-enable a tool another setting hides; an unknown tool name stops the server at startup.
  • MEMORY_DIR — Vault folder for structured memory files (About Me-style notes). Memory tools are hidden when MEMORY_ENABLED is false, but this value still feeds the defaults for PROTECTED_PATHS and ORPHAN_EXCLUDE_FOLDERS.
  • DAILY_NOTES_FOLDER — Vault folder for daily notes. Overrides the folder configured in Obsidian's daily-notes plugin. When unset, read from the vault's .obsidian/daily-notes.json, falling back to "Daily Notes".
  • DAILY_NOTES_FORMAT — Filename date format for daily notes (Moment.js tokens). Overrides the format configured in Obsidian's daily-notes plugin. When unset, read from the vault's .obsidian/daily-notes.json, falling back to "YYYY-MM-DD".
  • TRUST_PROXY_HOPS — Number of trusted reverse-proxy hops used to derive the client IP from X-Forwarded-For for OAuth rate limiting and request logs. With 0, injected forwarding headers are ignored.
  • TRUST_FORWARDED_HOPS — How many entries from the end of the RFC 7239 Forwarded header's for= list to count to reach the client IP for OAuth rate limiting and request logs. 0 ignores the header; 1 when the proxy in front writes it (e.g. AWS API Gateway); 2 when a CDN fronts that proxy and is the only way to reach it.
  • TZ — IANA timezone for timestamps and daily note resolution.
  • LOG_LEVEL — Logging verbosity.
  • LOG_DIR — Directory for log files that survive container re-creation. The container's own log is always written but discarded when the container is recreated; date-stamped files under LOG_DIR persist on the data volume. Default: /data/logs (remote image), $STORAGE_ROOT/data/logs (single-volume mode), none (local image). none keeps only the container log.
  • LOG_RETENTION_DAYS — Days to keep log files before automatic cleanup on startup; only applies when LOG_DIR is a path.
  • PROTECTED_PATHS — Comma-separated vault folder names blocked from vault_delete_note and vault_move_note. Default: MEMORY_DIR plus the daily notes folder, read from DAILY_NOTES_FOLDER or .obsidian/daily-notes.json (default Daily Notes). When set, overrides the default entirely.
  • ORPHAN_EXCLUDE_FOLDERS — Comma-separated vault folder names excluded from vault_find_orphans. Default: DAILY_NOTES_FOLDER (else "Daily Notes"), "Templates", MEMORY_DIR.
  • SERVICE_DOCUMENTATION_URL — Override the OAuth service documentation URL exposed via discovery metadata.
  • MAX_FILE_BYTES — Largest file vault_read_file will read, in bytes. Reading a larger file returns an error instead of content.
  • MAX_IMAGE_OUTPUT_BYTES — Byte budget for images returned by vault_read_file, in binary bytes before base64 encoding. Images exceeding the budget are downscaled/recompressed server-side to fit; raise for clients that accept larger tool responses.
  • MAX_PDF_RENDER_PAGES — Maximum PDF pages to render as images when raw: true is set on vault_read_file. The per-page byte budget is MAX_IMAGE_OUTPUT_BYTES divided evenly across the rendered pages.

This server takes extra arguments — see its repository.

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