Nexus vault CLI

nexus drives a running Nexus (Obsidian) vault from the shell over a local socket — no MCP config. It has two verbs: discover what you can do, then execute.

Start here

Run nexus --help first. It is the authoritative, always-current manual — commands, the context contract, CLI syntax, gotchas, and the tool catalog. It's offline and instant (no socket), so read it before your first real command instead of guessing.

For a common task, nexus playbook <name> gives you a ready-to-run recipe plus your workspaces and the exact tools it needs, in one call. Run nexus playbook to see what's available (typically: vault-work, organize, tasks, prompt).

The mindset (this is what --help can't teach you)

• Explore → inspect → exploit. Search/list find locations; content read gets contents; then you write. A search hit is a {path, score}, not the note — never quote, summarize, or edit from a hit without reading it first.
• nexus tools returns schemas, not data. It's discovery. Don't loop it hoping for vault content — that comes from nexus use --memory … --goal … -- content read ….
• --memory and --goal are real and enforced. You're operating a person's live vault; pass a genuine running summary and objective, not placeholders.
• --workspace and --session are pass-once. The vault remembers them: name a session and choose its workspace on the first call of a task (or run memory load-workspace <name>), then omit both — every later call continues that session and inherits its workspace. Nothing defaults silently: a session that never chose a workspace fails with "This session has no workspace yet" (only memory list-workspaces / load-workspace / create-workspace run before the choice). Pass a different value once to switch. nexus context shows what the vault currently remembers.
• You can't escape the vault. Paths are vault-relative; .., ~, and absolute paths are rejected. That's a guardrail, not a bug.
• Nothing is destroyed. The AI gets archive (reversible), not delete.
• Windows: nexus vaults discovers local named pipes. If policy blocks enumeration, pass --vault <name> or set NEXUS_VAULT.

The shape

nexus tools [selector]              # discover — tool schemas (never vault data)
nexus use --memory "<what you're doing>" --goal "<objective>" -- \
    <agent command --flags>         # execute — runs one tool, prints the result
nexus context                       # what this vault remembers: session + workspace

Add --session <name> --workspace <name> to the first use of a task only; the vault remembers both for every call after it.

The -- delimiter is canonical: context belongs before it; the tool command belongs after it. This avoids nested command-string quoting, especially in Windows PowerShell. The legacy one-string form remains supported.

Three rules that cover almost every way this goes wrong:

• -- splits the two halves, and only that. Context flags (--memory, --goal, --session, --constraints, --vault) go before it; the agent name, tool name, and every tool flag go after it.
• Pass a tool's required value positionally. Write memory load-workspace "Silicon Zone", not memory load-workspace --workspace "Silicon Zone". --workspace is also a context flag, so the positional form is the one that can't be misread.
• Keep the agent name with the tool name. The command after -- is always <agent> <tool> [flags] — storage list, not list.
• Context flags may sit before or after the verb. nexus --vault V use … and nexus use --vault V … are equivalent.

Malformed commands fail loudly with the corrected command in the error text — read it and retry rather than switching syntax forms. Nothing is silently dropped, so an error never means a partial write happened.

For multiline Markdown or content containing embedded quotes, keep the body out of shell argv. Any value-taking tool flag has a transport form: pipe with --<flag>-stdin or pass a local path with --<flag>-file (e.g. --content-stdin, --conversation-context-file ctx.md). Put the transport after the -- delimiter and do not also pass the flag directly. Never flatten multiline content to one line to dodge quoting:

Get-Content -Raw .\note.md |
    nexus use --memory "importing note" --goal "write note" -- content write --path Notes/Imported.md --content-stdin

Everything else — the flag table, per-tool schemas, syntax rules, the live per-vault catalog (including any enabled app agents) — comes from nexus --help, nexus tools <tool>, and nexus playbook <name>. Prefer those over guessing; they're always current.