Open in Terminal

Open your Obsidian vault in a terminal, or launch Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI and other coding agents inside it, straight from the command palette.

Install in Obsidian · Plugin page · Changelog

Why

Your vault is a folder of Markdown files, which is exactly what coding agents and Git work best with. Getting there normally means opening a terminal, finding the vault path and typing cd. This plugin turns that into one command, and it can hand the note you are looking at to the agent.

Features

• Open the vault in your terminal: one command opens your terminal at the vault root, or at the folder of the active note.
• Launch coding agents in your vault: dedicated commands for Claude Code, Codex CLI, GitHub Copilot, Cursor CLI, Gemini CLI and OpenCode. Turn on only the ones you use.
• Pass the active note to your agent: optionally include the current note path in the prompt, with your own prefix and suffix text and a live preview.
• One-command Git: Git: commit and push and Git: pull run from the vault root.
• Cross-platform: sensible defaults for macOS, Windows (including WSL) and Linux, stored per platform so a synced vault works on every machine.

Quick start

1. Install the plugin (see Installation) and enable it.
2. Press Cmd/Ctrl+P and run Open in terminal.
3. To use an agent, open Settings → Open in Terminal → Coding agents, turn on the agent you have installed (for example Claude Code), then run Open in Claude Code from the command palette.

If this saves you a few cds a day, a ⭐ on GitHub is the easiest way to help other Obsidian users find it.

Installation

Community plugins (recommended) In Obsidian, open Settings → Community plugins → Browse, search for Open in Terminal, click Install, then Enable. Or open the plugin page and click Add to Obsidian.

Manual

1. Download main.js and manifest.json from the latest release.
2. Put them in <your vault>/.obsidian/plugins/open-in-terminal/.
3. Reload Obsidian and enable Open in Terminal under Settings → Community plugins.

Beta versions (BRAT) Install BRAT, choose Add beta plugin, and enter Feng6611/Obsidian-open-in-Teminal.

Requires Obsidian 1.5.0 or later, desktop only. Agent and Git commands need the matching CLI (claude, codex, git, …) installed on your system.

Commands

Except for Open in terminal, every command stays off until you enable it in settings.

Settings

• Terminal application: the executable name or path, such as Terminal or iTerm on macOS, powershell or cmd.exe on Windows, gnome-terminal or alacritty on Linux. Leave blank for the platform default. Do not include command-line arguments.
• Open at current note's folder: uses the active note's folder as the working directory; falls back to the vault root when no note is open.
• Include current note in prompt: off by default. When on, coding agents launch with your prefix, the note path and your suffix combined into one prompt. Terminal and Git commands never receive this prompt.
• Reuse existing terminal instance (macOS): reuses the running terminal app; turn off to launch a new instance.
• Coding agents: toggles for each agent command.
• Git commands: default commit message (update by default) and toggles for the Git commands.
• Use WSL for commands (Windows): runs every configured command inside WSL.

Platform notes

• macOS: Terminal and iTerm are fully supported. Coding agents launch through a temporary .command script in a login shell; other terminal emulators must be able to open .command files.
• Windows: Command Prompt, Windows PowerShell, PowerShell 7, Windows Terminal and Tabby, with or without WSL.
• Linux: requires Bash. GNOME Terminal and terminals that accept the -e flag work out of the box.

FAQ

I don't see "Open in Claude Code" in the command palette. Agent and Git commands are off by default. Turn them on in Settings → Open in Terminal.

The agent command opens a terminal but nothing runs. The CLI must be installed and on your login shell's PATH. Run claude --version (or the matching command) in a normal terminal first.

Does the plugin send my notes anywhere? No. The plugin makes no network requests of its own. Only an optional note path, never note contents, can be passed to an agent prompt. Whatever the agent or CLI does after launch is up to that tool.

Does it skip the agent's permission prompts? No. The plugin never bypasses CLI confirmation prompts or permission checks.

Permissions and disclosures

This plugin is isDesktopOnly: true and needs two desktop capabilities that automated review may flag. Both are required for the product to work; they are scoped as follows.

Shell execution (child_process)

Commands are started with Node spawn and shell: false. The executable is one of:

• the terminal application name or path you configure in settings (validated to reject empty values and control characters; not a fixed allowlist, so custom terminals keep working);
• a fixed CLI agent command such as claude, codex, copilot, agent, gemini, or opencode;
• a git probe (git rev-parse) used only to detect whether the vault is a Git repository.

The working directory is the vault root, or, when enabled, the folder of the active note after resolving the path and confirming it still lies inside the vault. Paths that would escape the vault fall back to the vault root.

Direct filesystem access (fs)

On macOS and Windows the plugin writes a short-lived launch script (.command / .ps1, mode 0700) under a fresh directory in the OS temp folder, then deletes that directory after launch (or on failure). This is outside the vault because the system terminal APIs need a real script path; the Obsidian Vault API cannot substitute for it.

The plugin does not:

• read or write vault note contents via fs;
• walk your home directory or other arbitrary paths;
• make network requests of its own (any network activity comes only from the terminal or CLI tools you choose to run);
• put note body text into launch scripts (only an optional note path may be passed into an agent prompt).

See also Obsidian's Developer policies — Disclosures for vault-external file access.

Privacy

This desktop-only plugin launches programs on your local machine: it opens your terminal emulator and runs the commands you configure. On macOS and Windows it writes a temporary script outside the vault and deletes it after launch; on Windows that script runs under a process-scoped execution policy without changing system-wide policies. Git: commit and push stages all files under the vault root before committing.

Support the project

Open in Terminal is free and MIT-licensed. If it's part of your daily workflow:

• ⭐ Star the repo: it costs nothing and helps other people find the plugin.
• ☕ Buy me a coffee: helps keep updates coming.
• 🐛 Report a bug or request a feature: issues with your OS, terminal and agent are the most useful.

More from the author

Built by chenfeng.

• File Ignore: keep node_modules, build output and other non-note folders out of Obsidian's index.
• Command Reopen: a small Mac utility that makes Cmd+Tab restore minimized windows.

License

MIT