Obsidian

--obsidian writes one Markdown note per paper into an Obsidian vault: the metadata as Obsidian properties, the abstract, and links to the other papers of the same export. Use it to build a literature vault you annotate by hand.

Usage

Point mosaic at the vault once:

mosaic config --obsidian-vault ~/vault

Then add --obsidian to search, similar or get:

mosaic search "hall thruster particle-in-cell" --cached --obsidian
mosaic similar 10.1063/1.4972269 --obsidian
mosaic get 10.3389/fphy.2019.00140 --obsidian
mosaic search "hall thruster" --obsidian --obsidian-folder "papers/hall"   # another subfolder, this run only

The run ends with a count and the folder:

Obsidian: 29 note(s) added → ~/vault/papers

A note that already exists is skipped (N skipped (already exist)): mosaic never overwrites a note, so your edits survive later exports.

The note

This note was written by the export of tutorial chapter 6 (abstract and links shortened):

---
title: "E × B electron drift instability in Hall thrusters: Particle-in-cell simulations vs. theory"
authors:
  - Jean-Pierre Bœuf
  - Laurent Garrigues
year: 2018
doi: 10.1063/1.5017033
journal: Physics of Plasmas
volume: 25
issue: 6
source: OpenAlex
open_access: true
citation_count: 144
pdf_url: "https://aip.scitation.org/doi/pdf/10.1063/1.5017033"
url: "https://openalex.org/W2804872065"
tags:
  - paper
---

# E × B electron drift instability in Hall thrusters: Particle-in-cell simulations vs. theory

> [!abstract]
> The E × B Electron Drift Instability (E × B EDI), also called Electron Cyclotron Drift Instability, ...

## Metadata

| Field | Value |
|-------|-------|
| Authors | Jean-Pierre Bœuf, Laurent Garrigues |
| Year | 2018 |
| DOI | 10.1063/1.5017033 |
...

## See also

- [[2023_Maryam_Reduced-order_particle-in-cell_simulations_of_a_high-power_m]]
- [[2019_Zahra_Numerical_Study_of_Electron_Cyclotron_Drift_Instability_Appl]]
...

• Properties appear only when the paper has them (no doi: line without a DOI); source, open_access and tags are always there.
• The abstract callout is omitted when the source gave no abstract.
• See also links every other paper of the same command run, when wikilinks is on and the run exported more than one paper. Notes of earlier runs are not linked: mosaic does not read the vault.
• Notes contain no {{...}} or <%...%>, so the Templates and Templater plugins leave them alone. The properties work with Dataview:

```dataview
TABLE year, citation_count AS "Citations"
FROM "papers"
WHERE open_access = true
SORT citation_count DESC
```

Configuration

[obsidian]
vault_path = ""                            # vault root; required
subfolder = "papers"                       # "" writes to the vault root
filename_pattern = "{year}_{author}_{title}"
tags = ["paper"]
wikilinks = true

Key	Set with
vault_path	mosaic config --obsidian-vault PATH
subfolder	mosaic config --obsidian-subfolder NAME (--obsidian-folder overrides it for one run)
filename_pattern	mosaic config --obsidian-filename-pattern PATTERN
tags	mosaic config --obsidian-tag paper --obsidian-tag hall (repeatable; replaces the list)
wikilinks	mosaic config --obsidian-wikilinks / --no-obsidian-wikilinks

The file name placeholders are those of PDF file names: {year} (0000 if unknown), {author}, {title} (the first 60 characters), {source}, {doi}, {journal}. {author} is the first word of the first author's name as the source writes it: the family name for "Family, Given" sources such as Crossref, the given name for "Given Family" ones such as arXiv (2019_Zahra_... above).

A note is matched by its file name: change filename_pattern and the next export writes new notes beside the old ones.

See also: tutorial chapter 6, export recipes, mosaic config.