QMD Desktop-only Search for Obsidian

An Obsidian plugin that integrates QMD local search (BM25 full-text search, vector semantic search, and LLM re-ranking) into a native-feeling search modal.

Prerequisites

1. QMD installed via bun install -g https://github.com/tobi/qmd
2. A QMD collection named obsidian pointing to your vault:

   qmd collection add /path/to/your/vault --name obsidian
   qmd embed
   

3. Embeddings generated (run qmd embed after indexing)

Install (manual)

# Clone or copy this folder into your vault's plugins directory
cp -r obsidian-qmd-search /path/to/vault/.obsidian/plugins/qmd-search

# Build
cd /path/to/vault/.obsidian/plugins/qmd-search
npm install
npm run build

# Enable the plugin in Obsidian Settings > Community Plugins

Usage

1. Open the command palette (Cmd/Ctrl + P)
2. Search for "QMD" and choose from one of the three search mode commands
3. Type your query and press Enter
4. Wait for results (hybrid search uses LLM reranking, may take a few seconds)
5. Click a result or use arrow keys + Enter to open the file

Settings

• QMD binary path: defaults to qmd. If Obsidian can't find it, set the full path (e.g. /Users/you/.bun/bin/qmd)
• Collection name: defaults to obsidian
• Max results: defaults to 16

Notes

• This plugin is desktop-only (it uses child_process to call the qmd CLI)
• The qmd query command uses hybrid search with LLM reranking, which gives the best quality results but is slower than plain qmd search. First run may be slow if models need to load.
• Keep your index fresh with qmd update and qmd embed periodically