Claudian – AI‑powered coding assistant inside Obsidian

What it is – Claudian is an Obsidian community plugin that lets you talk to a variety of LLM‑based coding agents (Claude Code, Codex, Grok Build, OpenCode, Pi, DeepSeek Harness, etc.) directly from your vault. The vault becomes the agent’s working directory, so the model can read, write, search files, run shell commands and carry out multi‑step workflows.

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Key features

Feature	What you get
Inline edit	Select text (or place the cursor) and hit a hot‑key to let the agent edit the note in‑place, with a word‑level diff preview.
Zen mode	Chat UI collapses to a compact composer at the bottom of the note, keeping the focus on your writing.
Slash commands & Skills	Type / or $ to insert reusable prompt templates (Skills) that can be scoped to the vault or user.
@‑mentions	Reference other vault files, folders, or previous Claudian sessions inside a prompt.
Side chat (/side or /btw)	Open a temporary side conversation for experiments without disturbing the main chat.
MCP servers	Connect external tools through each provider’s native “Managed Client Protocol” configuration.
Tabs & session manager	Multiple chat tabs, single‑pane or dual‑pane layouts, and persistent session management.
Collaboration	A separate plugin (Claudian Collab) adds real‑time multi‑user editing.

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Supported agents (providers)

• Claude Code (Anthropic)
• Codex (OpenAI)
• Grok Build (xAI)
• OpenCode (v2, v1 deprecated Oct 2026)
• Pi (Earendil Works)
• DeepSeek Harness

You need the corresponding CLI or API subscription for the provider you want to use.

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Installation

1. From Obsidian – Settings → Community plugins → Browse → search “Claudian” → Install → Enable.
2. From source – Clone into <vault>/.obsidian/plugins/claudian, run npm install && npm run build, then enable in Obsidian.

Development mode is available via npm run dev (watch) or npm run build for a production bundle.

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How it works (high‑level architecture)

• src/main.ts – plugin entry point.
• core – provider‑agnostic execution engine, process handling, prompt encoding, and tool abstractions.
• providers/* – adapters for each LLM service (Claude, Codex, etc.) handling CLI discovery, model discovery, and history.
• features/* – UI pieces: chat sidebar, inline‑edit modal, settings UI, etc.
• shared & utils – reusable UI components and generic helpers.

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Privacy & data use

• Sent to the provider: your prompt, any attached files/images, and tool‑call results. The destination (Anthropic, OpenAI, etc.) is configurable per provider.
• No telemetry: Claudian does not send background usage data. Network traffic only occurs when you explicitly invoke a provider or an MCP endpoint.

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Typical troubleshooting steps

• CLI not found – Ensure the provider’s CLI is on the system PATH (or set the path manually in Settings → Claudian → Providers).
• Missing model – Update the provider CLI, then click Discover under the provider’s model list.
• Authentication failures – Environment variables like ANTHROPIC_API_KEY can override CLI credentials; clear or override them in the plugin’s environment settings.
• Node / npm path mismatch – Make sure the Node binary used by the CLI is reachable from the GUI app’s environment (add its directory to the shared PATH).

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Getting help / contributing

• Open an issue on the GitHub repo for bugs or feature requests.
• Pull requests are welcome; see CONTRIBUTING.md. New providers are not accepted – they must be added upstream by the maintainer.

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License & sponsorship

• MIT License.
• Sponsored by Moonshot AI (Kimi) and Ke Holdings Inc. (BEIKE). No affiliate commission is taken from the promotional links.

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In short: Claudian turns your Obsidian vault into an interactive coding playground powered by the latest LLM coding agents, with a full‑featured chat UI, inline editing, and extensible tool integration, all while keeping data flow transparent and telemetry‑free.