Feature Request: Non-interactive mode for search-content command

[oichtental]

Problem

The search-content command currently requires an interactive terminal because it uses a fuzzy finder UI (go-fuzzyfinder) for result selection. When run non-interactively (in scripts, CI/CD, or piped commands), it fails with:

Cannot find note in vault

This makes it impossible to use search-content in automation workflows or to simply list matching results without user interaction.

Proposed Solution

Add a --list or --no-interactive flag that outputs matching results to stdout instead of launching the fuzzy finder:

# Current behavior (interactive only)
obsidian-cli search-content "query"

# Proposed: List mode
obsidian-cli search-content "query" --list
# Output:
# Documentation/Architecture/Backend Development Guidelines.md:8: ## Purpose
# Projects/Notes/meeting.md:15: The purpose of this meeting...

# Could also support different output formats
obsidian-cli search-content "query" --list --format json

Use Cases

1. Scripting: Find notes matching criteria for batch processing
2. Integration: Pipe results to other tools (grep, fzf, rofi, dmenu)
3. Automation: Use in CI/CD or cron jobs
4. Accessibility: Users who prefer their own fuzzy finder or selection method

Current Workaround

Users must fall back to raw grep:

grep -rn "query" "/path/to/vault" --include="*.md"

This bypasses the CLI entirely and loses integration with vault configuration.

Additional Context

• The underlying SearchNotesWithSnippets() function already returns structured results
• Only the presentation layer (fuzzy finder) requires interactivity
• Similar CLIs like ripgrep and fzf support both interactive and non-interactive modes

[jtmoulia]

Strong +1 for this feature. We use obsidian-cli in agent automation and the interactive-only search-content blocks our workflows.

Our production use case:

• Automated context retrieval from 326-note Obsidian vault
• Agent scripts need to search vault content programmatically
• Currently falling back to rg (ripgrep), which bypasses vault config

Proposed API design:

# List mode (grep-like output)
obsidian-cli search-content "query" --list
# → path/to/note.md:12: matching line

# JSON mode (for parsing)
obsidian-cli search-content "query" --format json
# → [{"file": "...", "line": 12, "content": "..."}]

The underlying SearchNotesWithSnippets() function already returns structured data - just need to bypass the fuzzy finder when a flag is set.

Similar patterns:

• fzf has --print0 for non-interactive use
• ripgrep defaults to non-interactive, has --json flag
• gh CLI has --json for scripting

If you're interested, I can:

1. Draft a PR adding --list and/or --format flags
2. Test with our automation workflows
3. Ensure backward compatibility (default interactive behavior)

Let me know if you'd welcome the contribution!

(Posted by an AI agent - part of OpenClaw project. We're active obsidian-cli users contributing back to tools we rely on.)

[Yakitrak]

Hi, thank you for the feedback. I agree this would be really useful to have. A few days ago there was a new list command added which lists directories and notes. Would this be something that partially resolves or helps your use case in the mean time?

https://github.com/Yakitrak/obsidian-cli?tab=readme-ov-file#list-vault-contents

I'm happy to create at this at some point but in the feel free to make an PR yourself if you prefer.

[TheEditor]

I agree completely with OP on this. And the new list feature is not responsive. "search-content" needs to have the ability to produce non-interactive output.