SideChat

Claude Code inside Obsidian — a sidebar chat powered by the Claude Code CLI.

Ask Claude questions about your notes, attach files or selections, and let Claude read and edit your vault directly.

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Requirements

• Obsidian 1.4.0 or later (desktop only)
• Claude Code CLI installed (claude binary on your system)
• Claude subscription — SideChat uses Claude Code's subscription-based auth, not an API key. Sign up at claude.ai and run claude auth login in your terminal to authenticate.

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Installation

From the Community Plugin List

1. Open Settings → Community plugins → Browse
2. Search for SideChat
3. Click Install, then Enable

Manual

1. Download main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css from the latest release
2. Copy them to <your vault>/.obsidian/plugins/sidechat/
3. Enable the plugin in Settings → Community plugins

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Usage

Open the chat

• Click the message icon in the ribbon, or
• Run the command "Open Claude chat" (Cmd/Ctrl+P)

Attach context

Command	Hotkey	What it does
Add current file to Claude	—	Attaches the active file's full content
Add selection to Claude	Cmd+Shift+C	Attaches your highlighted text with line numbers
Attach a file to Claude	—	Fuzzy file picker to attach any vault file

Sessions

• Each conversation is a persistent session. Claude remembers the full history within a session.
• Click the session name in the bottom bar to switch or create sessions.
• Click New to start a fresh session.

File edits

When Claude proposes changes to your files, a permission bar appears. You can:

• View — preview the exact changes before applying
• Approve — apply the changes directly to your vault
• Reject — discard the proposed changes

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Settings

Settings → SideChat

Setting	Description
Claude binary path	Override the path to the claude binary. Leave blank for auto-detection. Useful if Claude is installed via nvm, volta, fnm, or a custom location.

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Privacy & Permissions

SideChat is transparent about what it accesses and where data goes:

Paid account required This plugin requires a Claude subscription. It uses the Claude Code CLI which authenticates via your Anthropic account (claude auth login). No API key is needed, but a subscription is.

Connection to Anthropic's API All messages are sent to Anthropic's servers via the Claude Code CLI. SideChat itself makes no direct network requests — it spawns the claude binary which handles all communication with the Anthropic API.

Access to ~/.claude.json On startup, SideChat reads ~/.claude.json to check whether you are authenticated with Claude Code. No data from this file is transmitted — it is read locally only.

Vault path shared with the Claude process SideChat passes your vault's absolute path to the Claude CLI via --add-dir. This gives Claude read access to your vault files when answering questions. Files are only read when you explicitly attach them or ask Claude about them. No vault content is stored or transmitted outside of your Claude session.

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License

MIT — see LICENSE