ragnarok

ragnarok

Local RAG search over Obsidian vaults for Claude Code.

ragnarok indexes the Markdown notes of one or more Obsidian vaults on your computer. A local MCP server gives Claude Code search tools over the index. No note leaves the computer: the embeddings come from a local Ollama model, and the index is one SQLite file.

Features

• Hybrid search. Each query runs a dense search (embeddings in sqlite-vec) and a keyword search (SQLite FTS5 with BM25). Reciprocal rank fusion joins the two lists. The unit of rank is the note, with its best section.
• Heading chunks. The splitter cuts each note at its headings and joins very short sections.
• Metadata from frontmatter or path. Each note gets a vault, a project, an area, a type, a status and ticket keys. The frontmatter gives these values first. For a note without them, path rules in the configuration give them.
• Project search. find_projects finds the earlier projects that a prompt continues or resembles, also when the prompt does not name the project. list_project gives all notes of a project.
• Always current. Each tool call first scans the vaults for changed notes (usually less than 100 ms) and embeds them. There is no watcher process.
• Private notes. Notes under the configured private paths are in the index, but the server does not return them. Only the user can open them, with allow_private = true in the configuration.
• Credential redaction. The indexer and open_note replace literal passwords, tokens and keys with [REDACTED]. The vault files do not change.
• Frontmatter backfill. ragnarok backfill propose writes a proposal of the missing frontmatter keys for a vault. ragnarok backfill export writes a JSON file with the title and the first lines of each public note that needs a description (credentials removed). Claude writes the descriptions into one or more JSON files, {path: {"description": "...", "type": "..."}}. ragnarok backfill merge <vault> <file>... puts them into the proposal, removes credentials, reports each description of more than 25 words and each row with no description, and replaces a default type with a valid type from Claude. You examine the proposal, then ragnarok backfill apply makes a backup archive of the vault and adds only the missing keys.
• Evaluation. ragnarok eval compares grep, keyword, dense and hybrid search on your own question sets. ragnarok eval agent compares a Claude Code agent with grep and an agent with the MCP tools.
• One-command setup. ragnarok init installs the model and the index, and registers the MCP server in Claude Code when the Claude Code plugin does not give it. ragnarok doctor checks the setup.

Requirements

• macOS with Homebrew. The setup uses brew services for Ollama.
• Ollama: brew install ollama.
• Claude Code.
• uv: brew install uv. uv installs Python 3.12. setup.sh installs uv if it is missing.

Setup

ragnarok is on PyPI as ragnarok-mcp and in the MCP Registry as io.github.freyr/ragnarok.

With the Claude Code plugin (no clone)

In Claude Code:

/plugin marketplace add freyr/ragnarok-bundle
/plugin install ragnarok@ragnarok

Then in a terminal:

uvx ragnarok-mcp init

The plugin starts the server with uvx ragnarok-mcp serve and adds the search guidance to each session. The home folder is ~/.ragnarok. To use a different folder, set RAGNAROK_HOME in the env of ~/.claude/settings.json and in your shell.

From a checkout

git clone https://github.com/freyr/ragnarok-bundle.git
cd ragnarok-bundle
./setup.sh                      # installs uv if needed, then runs `ragnarok init`

The checkout is the home folder.

What init does

ragnarok init does six steps. It skips each step that is already done:

1. It writes config.toml from config.example.toml. It asks for the vault root, the folder that holds your vault folders, and adds each subfolder as a vault.
2. It checks that Ollama is installed.
3. It runs Ollama as a login service with brew services start ollama (it asks first). If Ollama runs outside brew services, for example ollama serve in a terminal, init stops it and starts the service.
4. It pulls the embedding model.
5. It builds the index. A vault with 1,500 notes takes approximately 12 minutes on an Apple Silicon Mac.
6. When the plugin ragnarok gives the MCP server, it removes a registration at the user scope (it asks first). Else it registers the MCP server ragnarok in Claude Code at the user scope (it asks before it replaces another registration).

Restart Claude Code after step 6. ragnarok doctor checks the same six parts and prints the fix for each failure.

Before step 5, examine config.toml: remove a folder that is not a vault, and add your private paths. A later change of the configuration applies at the next ragnarok index or MCP tool call, with no restart.

Use in Claude Code

The server gives six tools:

Tool	What it does
search	Hybrid search over the notes. Filters: vault, project, area, type, archived.
find_projects	The projects that match a prompt, with the summary and the matching notes of each project.
list_project	All notes of one project.
open_projects	The open projects (state: in-progress and paused by default), grouped by state, newest update first.
open_note	The text of a note or of one section, with its links and backlinks. A note of more than 4,000 words gives an outline: each section with its heading path, words and first sentence.
find_by_jira	The notes that contain a ticket key, for example ABC-123.

The plugin adds the guidance below to each session itself, with the plugin tool names mcp__plugin_ragnarok_ragnarok__*. Without the plugin, Claude Code loads MCP tools on demand. To make Claude use them before grep, add a short instruction to your ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md file, for example:

## Finding notes: ragnarok first

The `ragnarok` MCP server indexes my Obsidian vaults. Use it before Grep or Glob whenever you look for
notes, earlier work or context:

- `find_projects`: the prompt continues or resembles earlier work and names no project. Then call
  `list_project` on the best match (look at the top 3).
- `search`: facts, decisions, how something was done. Filters: vault, project, area, type.
- `open_note`: read a note or one section, with its links and backlinks. A long note gives its outline first; open the section you need by heading.
- `open_projects`: which projects are in progress or paused.
- `find_by_jira`: a ticket key such as `OPS-77`.

The tools are deferred. Load them in one call before the first use:
`ToolSearch` with `select:mcp__ragnarok__search,mcp__ragnarok__find_projects,mcp__ragnarok__list_project,mcp__ragnarok__open_projects,mcp__ragnarok__open_note,mcp__ragnarok__find_by_jira`.

If the tools are absent (for example on a computer without ragnarok), fall back to Grep and say so.
Results can be unrelated: read the text before you rely on it, and cite note paths. Private notes are
refused by design; do not work around the refusal with Read or Grep.

Adapting to your vaults

docs/vault-requirements.md tells how a vault must look to get the most from ragnarok: headings, project folders, SUMMARY.md, frontmatter and private folders.

The default path rules expect <vault>/<area>/<project>/note.md. If your vaults look different, the repo skill .claude/skills/adapt-vault/ guides Claude Code through the changes. Open Claude Code in the checkout and ask it to adapt ragnarok to your vaults. The skill:

1. runs ragnarok survey on each vault;
2. agrees the private folders with you, before any other change and before a new vault goes into vaults;
3. writes the path rules into config.toml, checked with ragnarok inspect;
4. runs the frontmatter backfill, if you agree, with your review before apply;
5. writes a small evaluation set from your notes and runs ragnarok eval mechanical;
6. adds the guidance above to your ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md, after it asks you.

It changes only config.toml and adds frontmatter keys. It never moves, renames or deletes a note or a folder.

Configuration

config.toml is in the home folder. A relative path in it is relative to the home folder. config.example.toml explains each key. The most important keys:

Key	What
root, vaults	The folder that holds the vaults, and the vault folders to index.
[vault_paths]	The folder of a vault that is not in root, for example kb = "~/code/kb". A note key stays <vault>/<path>.
private_patterns	Glob patterns of private notes, for example "Notes/Journal/**".
model, dimension	The Ollama embedding model and its vector size. A dimension below the native dimension of the model gives a shorter vector (Ollama dimensions). A change needs ragnarok index --rebuild.
query_prefix, doc_template	Override the query prefix and the document template of the model profile. {title} in the template is the note title and the heading path. The profiles cover embeddinggemma-2:270m (and -bf16-text), qwen3-embedding:0.6b and :4b, snowflake-arctic-embed2 and bge-m3; another model gets the prefixes of embeddinggemma-2:270m. The old key doc_prefix still works as doc_template. A change needs ragnarok index --rebuild.
keep_alive	How long Ollama keeps the embedding model in memory after a call: an integer of seconds, -1 (the default) keeps it loaded, or a duration such as "30m". A change needs no rebuild.
min_words, max_words	The chunk size limits of the splitter. The splitter also cuts a chunk to the token limit of the model profile (4 characters for each token), and a text that Ollama refuses as too long is embedded in two halves; Ollama never truncates a text. A change needs ragnarok index --rebuild.
chunk_prefix	none (the default) or description: the description of a note goes before the text of each body chunk in the text to the model. The stored text and the keyword index do not change. A change needs ragnarok index --rebuild.
note_rank	How the chunks of a note give its rank: maxp (the default, the best chunk), topk_sum (the sum of the scores of the best 3 chunks of the note in the dense list and in the keyword list) or note_vector (also the mean chunk vector of each note, as a third list). A change needs a new index.
[variants.<name>]	The bench: a variant overrides model, dimension, query_prefix, doc_template, min_words, max_words, chunk_prefix and note_rank.
[corpora.<name>]	The bench: a root and a list of vaults that a variant indexes.
project_markers	A folder that holds one of these files is a project folder (default DRIVERS.md, SUMMARY.md).
jira_prefixes	The ticket prefixes that find_by_jira knows.
[vault_rules.<vault>]	The path rules of one vault: which folder gives the area and the project.

Note metadata

ragnarok reads these frontmatter keys. Each key is optional:

---
project: heating-upgrade     # the project slug; default: from the path rules
area: home                   # a wide subject; default: from the path rules
type: plan                   # drivers, summary, research, spec, plan, brainstorm, review, decision,
                             # guide, reference, meeting, log, template or note
status: active               # active or archived; a note in an _archive folder, or in a project
                             # whose SUMMARY.md has state: superseded or abandoned, is archived; state: done is current
description: One sentence about the note, which improves find_projects.
jira: [ABC-123]              # ticket keys, in addition to the keys in the text
---

Without frontmatter, the path rules give the metadata. The default rules work for a vault with the layout <vault>/<area>/<project>/note.md. For a different layout, add a [vault_rules.<vault>] table. Use ragnarok inspect <note path> to see the metadata of a note.

Commands

Command	What it does
ragnarok init	Sets up this computer (see Setup).
ragnarok doctor	Checks the setup.
ragnarok index [--rebuild]	Adds, changes and removes notes in the index. After a change of the path rules, the private paths or the markers, it derives the metadata of all notes again, with no new embeddings. When a .md marker file is added or removed, it does the same for the notes under the folder of that file. --rebuild is needed only after a change of model, dimension, min_words or max_words. It keeps the embedding cache, so it embeds only the chunk texts that are not in the cache.
ragnarok status	Shows the size and the state of the index.
ragnarok search "<query>"	Searches from the terminal.
ragnarok inspect <path>...	Shows the metadata of notes.
ragnarok chunks <path>... | --stats	Shows the chunks of notes, or the totals.
ragnarok serve	Runs the MCP server on stdio. Claude Code starts it.
ragnarok backfill propose|export|merge|apply <vault> [file...]	Proposes, describes and applies missing frontmatter keys. The order is propose, export, Claude writes descriptions, merge <vault> <file>..., you examine the proposal, apply.
ragnarok survey <vault> [--json]	Prints the folders, frontmatter keys, marker files, name patterns and ticket prefixes of a vault folder. Run it before you write [vault_rules.<vault>]. It prints no note text.
ragnarok eval mechanical|pool|agent	Runs an evaluation on the question sets in data/eval/sets/.
ragnarok bench index --variant <name> --corpus <name>	Builds or updates the index of a variant on a corpus in data/variants/<variant>/<corpus>/index.db. It shares the embedding cache, so a variant with the default embedding settings embeds nothing again. It refuses an index that was built with other settings of the variant.
ragnarok bench run --set <file> --variant <name>	Runs each question of a set through the MCP search (limit 20, with the change scan, no filter) on the index of the variant on the corpus of the set. It writes the rank of each expected note, the scan time and the search time of each question, the keyword overlap of the question and the gold note, and the BM25 rank of the gold note to data/bench/<set hash>-<variant hash>.json. It first brings the index of the variant current with no limit. It refuses a set when an expected path is not in the index or is private, lists each such path with its reason and runs no question.
ragnarok bench compare --set <file> <A> <B> [<B2>...] [--margin 0.05]	Gives recall@5 and MRR of each variant, by stratum and by area, and the difference B − A with a 95% interval from a cluster bootstrap (10,000 samples, fixed seed). With more than one B, the interval level follows the Holm correction. It lists the share of discordant questions and each changed question with its diagnostics. It ends with one verdict line for each B (see the set format).
ragnarok bench convert <draft set> --out <file> --name <name> --kind synthetic|real --corpus <name>	Converts a draft set of ragnarok eval to the set format. The stratum is the old type, the cluster is the first expected path, and the area comes from the metadata rules of the first expected note (unknown when the note is absent). It does not convert a question with no expected path or with a folder as an expected path, and it lists each one.

The set format

A set is one JSON file:

{
  "name": "pilot", "kind": "real", "version": 2, "corpus": "real", "hash": "<SHA-256 of the questions>",
  "questions": [
    {"id": "q01", "question": "What is a field stop?", "expected": ["Private/Astro/Field Stop.md"],
     "stratum": "lookup", "area": "astro", "cluster": "Private/Astro/Field Stop.md", "notes": "optional"}
  ]
}

• kind is synthetic or real. corpus is a table [corpora.<name>] of the config.
• hash is the SHA-256 of the questions list as JSON with sorted keys and no spaces. The bench refuses a set whose hash does not agree.
• expected holds one or more note paths. A continuation question lists the SUMMARY.md of its project.
• cluster is the path of the main gold note. The bootstrap draws clusters, not questions.
• recall@5 is 1 when all expected notes are in the first 5 notes, else 0. MRR uses the rank of the first expected note; no expected note in the first 20 gives 0.

The verdict of bench compare:

• A synthetic set: B wins when the interval of B − A at its Holm level is above 0 for recall@5 or for MRR, the point difference of the other measure is not below 0, and the p95 search time (scan included) is below 500 ms. The report also gives the sign of the difference in each vault.
• A real set does not decide a win. It checks that B does not get worse: the lower end of the interval of B − A must be above −margin for recall@5 and for MRR. It also checks the p95 time.

Run each command with uvx ragnarok-mcp, for example uvx ragnarok-mcp search "boiler", or with uv run in the checkout.

Where things are

Everything is in the home folder: RAGNAROK_HOME, else the checkout, else ~/.ragnarok. In a checkout, git ignores config.toml, data/ and logs/.

Path	What
config.toml	The configuration of this computer.
data/index.db	The SQLite index. Copy it and data/embed-cache.db to a second computer to skip the first index.
data/embed-cache.db	The embedding cache that all index files share. Its key is the model, the dimension, the document template and the text hash.
data/variants/<variant>/<corpus>/index.db	The index of a bench variant on a corpus. The MCP server never uses it.
data/bench/	The results of bench run, one file for each set and variant settings.
data/backups/	The vault archives that backfill apply makes before it writes.
data/proposals/	The output of backfill propose and backfill export.
data/eval/	Your question sets (sets/), the evaluation results and the mirror of the agent evaluation.
logs/server.log	The MCP server log, one line for each tool call with its time.

Ollama keeps the model in ~/.ollama.

Repository layout

This repository holds the MCP server and the Claude Code plugin marketplace ragnarok.

src/ragnarok/  tests/             the MCP server, the PyPI package ragnarok-mcp
pyproject.toml  server.json       the package and the MCP Registry entry
CHANGELOG.md                      the changelog of the server
.claude-plugin/marketplace.json   the marketplace "ragnarok": lists each plugin and its folder
plugins/<name>/                   one folder for each plugin, with .claude-plugin/plugin.json
plugins/CHANGELOG.md              the changelog of the plugins
templates/plugin/                 the skeleton for a new plugin
scripts/                          the version bump and the validation of the plugins

The server and the plugins have separate versions and tags: server-vX.Y.Z and plugin-vX.Y.Z.

Development

Server

uv run pytest
uv run ruff check . && uv run ruff format --check .

Plugins

Load a plugin from its folder for one session:

claude --plugin-dir plugins/<name>

Or add the checkout as a local marketplace. Then /reload-plugins reads your edits with no new version:

claude plugin marketplace add <path of the checkout>

To add a plugin, copy templates/plugin/ to plugins/<name>/, replace PLUGIN_NAME and ONE_LINE_DESCRIPTION, and add an entry to .claude-plugin/marketplace.json. scripts/validate-plugins.sh validates all plugins. Do not change a plugin version by hand.

Server release

1. Set the version in pyproject.toml and in both version fields of server.json, and add the section to CHANGELOG.md.
2. After the merge, push the tag: git tag server-v1.2.3 && git push origin server-v1.2.3.
3. The workflow publish.yml checks that the three versions match the tag, runs the tests, publishes the package to PyPI with trusted publishing, then publishes server.json to the MCP Registry.

The tags v1.0.0 to v2.1.0 are the server releases before the plugins moved into this repository.

Plugin release

All plugins and the marketplace share one version. Each push to main that changes plugins/ or .claude-plugin/ runs plugins-release.yml. It looks at the commit messages since the last plugin-v tag. A marker in a commit message selects the release:

Marker	Release	Example
[major]	1.4.2 → 2.0.0	Rename the search skill [major]
[minor]	1.4.2 → 1.5.0	Add the setup command [minor]
[patch]	1.4.2 → 1.4.3	Fix the hook matcher [patch]
none, or [none]	no release	Edit the README

Put a marker only in a commit that changes the plugins: the workflow reads all commit messages since the last plugin tag. When a marker is found, the workflow runs plugins-ci.yml, sets the new version in .claude-plugin/marketplace.json and in every plugin.json, adds the section to plugins/CHANGELOG.md with git-cliff (cliff.toml), commits, tags plugin-vX.Y.Z and publishes a GitHub release.

License

MIT. See LICENSE.