An Obsidian plugin that brings RAG-Anything-level retrieval to your vault. Uses LightRAG (knowledge graph + hybrid vector retrieval) with a Python backend packaged as a single auto-downloaded binary — no Python installation required.
- Chat with your entire vault using a sidebar panel
- Supports Markdown, PDF, DOCX, XLSX, images (OCR)
- Knowledge graph + hybrid retrieval (LightRAG)
- OpenAI (API key required)
- Index current file, current folder, or entire vault
- Storage inside your vault at
.obsidian-rag/
- Copy
plugin/contents to<vault>/.obsidian/plugins/obsidian-rag/ - Enable plugin in Obsidian → Settings → Community Plugins
- On first launch a download modal appears — click OK to download the ~100MB backend binary (one time only)
- Configure your LLM provider in Settings → Obsidian RAG
See DEVOPS.md for the full guide: local dev → binary rebuild → commit → tag → CI release → production download test.
cd backend
pip install -r requirements.txt
cd plugin
npm install
npm run dev # watch mode
npm run build # production build → main.jsCopy main.js + manifest.json to <vault>/.obsidian/plugins/obsidian-rag/.
cd backend
pip install pyinstaller
pyinstaller build.spec --noconfirm --clean
# Output: backend/dist/obsidian-rag-backendPush a semver tag to trigger multi-platform builds:
git tag v0.1.0
git push origin v0.1.0GitHub Actions builds Linux / macOS / Windows binaries and creates a GitHub Release automatically.
Obsidian Plugin (TypeScript)
↕ HTTP localhost:8765
FastAPI Server (Python binary, auto-downloaded)
├── LightRAG — knowledge graph + hybrid retrieval
├── PyMuPDF — PDF parsing
├── python-docx / openpyxl — Office parsing
├── pytesseract — image OCR (requires Tesseract installed)
└── Storage: .obsidian-rag/ inside vault
| File | Purpose |
|---|---|
backend/main.py |
FastAPI entry point, CLI args, uvicorn |
backend/rag_engine.py |
LightRAG setup, OpenAI |
backend/document_parser.py |
Multi-format document parsing |
backend/routes.py |
API route handlers |
backend/build.spec |
PyInstaller spec (edit hidden_imports if build fails) |
plugin/src/main.ts |
Plugin entry point |
plugin/src/backend-manager.ts |
Binary download, process management |
plugin/src/rag-client.ts |
HTTP client for backend API |
plugin/src/views/chat-view.ts |
Sidebar chat UI |
Backend won't start — check console (Ctrl+Shift+I in Obsidian) for errors from the backend process.
"Port 8765 in use" — change backendPort in plugin settings.
PyInstaller build fails with ImportError — add the missing module to hiddenimports in build.spec.
Images not indexing — install Tesseract: brew install tesseract (macOS) or apt install tesseract-ocr (Linux).
macOS "binary is damaged" — the plugin handles this automatically via xattr -d com.apple.quarantine after download.