What is the Vault Cortex MCP server?
Standalone MCP server for Obsidian vaults — hybrid search, notes & files, memory, tasks, OAuth 2.1
How to install Vault Cortex
Copy-paste configuration for popular MCP clients.
MCP_AUTH_TOKENrequiredsecretBearer token for MCP client authentication. Must match the Authorization header sent by clients. Generate with: openssl rand -hex 32
PUBLIC_URLPublic 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_ENABLEDEnable or disable the embedding pipeline. When false, no ONNX model is downloaded, no vector tables are created, and search uses FTS5 only.
RERANK_MODECross-encoder reranking mode: blended (position-aware score blending after RRF fusion) or none (skip reranking). Only takes effect when EMBEDDING_ENABLED is true.
WINDOWS_MODEWindows 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_ENABLEDEnable or disable the structured memory layer. When false, memory tools are hidden, bootstrap is skipped, and server metadata omits memory references.
FILE_TOOLS_ENABLEDEnable or disable file tools (vault_read_file, vault_list_files). When false, file tools are hidden and server metadata omits file tool references.
READONLY_MODERun the server read-only: every vault-writing tool is hidden, the memory folder is not auto-created, and server metadata omits write references.
DISABLED_TOOLSHide 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_DIRVault 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_FOLDERVault 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_FORMATFilename 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_HOPSNumber 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_HOPSHow 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.
TZIANA timezone for timestamps and daily note resolution.
LOG_LEVELLogging verbosity.
LOG_DIRDirectory 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_DAYSDays to keep log files before automatic cleanup on startup; only applies when LOG_DIR is a path.
PROTECTED_PATHSComma-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_FOLDERSComma-separated vault folder names excluded from vault_find_orphans. Default: DAILY_NOTES_FOLDER (else "Daily Notes"), "Templates", MEMORY_DIR.
SERVICE_DOCUMENTATION_URLOverride the OAuth service documentation URL exposed via discovery metadata.
MAX_FILE_BYTESLargest file vault_read_file will read, in bytes. Reading a larger file returns an error instead of content.
MAX_IMAGE_OUTPUT_BYTESByte 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_PAGESMaximum 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.
Related MCP servers

Lossless context compression: 2-8x fewer tokens, byte-exact recovery, search inside payloads

Long-term memory for AI agents: semantic facts, episodic events, and procedural workflows that evolve from failures

Tripwire
MCP for Roblox Studio and Open Cloud: drive Studio, run headless tests, and review game security.

Lumi App Finder
Find Lumi Studio iOS apps by task across all 50 Apple locales, with direct App Store links.

io.github.aliceappai/mcp-server-alice
Secure audio transcription meets AI. Connect Alice recordings to Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, and more.

MarketNow
Verify AI agent credentials, translate 9 formats, check scam domains, search 68k+ MCP servers.