file-edit

Obsidian File Edit

Edits an Obsidian vault file in place so its filesystem birth time is preserved. Claude's Edit and Write tools use a temp-file-rename strategy on macOS that resets birth time — this sub-skill writes through a process that modifies the existing inode instead.

Obsidian uses filesystem birth time for the created field in dataview queries, sort orders, and plugin behaviors. Every rename-based write corrupts that timeline.

When to use

Invoke this sub-skill any time you need to edit an existing file in an Obsidian vault. For new files, use the Write tool then run SetFile -d "$(date '+%m/%d/%Y %H:%M:%S')" "$PATH" directly — there is no prior birth time to preserve.

This does not apply to obsidian append/obsidian prepend CLI commands — those preserve metadata natively.

Happy path: in-place write

1. Read the file

Use the Read tool to load the current file contents.

2. Compute the new content in memory

Apply your edits to the content as a string. Do not call Edit or Write — they reset birth time.

3. Write in place

Pipe the full new content to the file via shell redirect. This modifies the existing inode and preserves birth time:

cat > "$VAULT_PATH/path/to/file.md" <<'VAULTKIT_EOF'
<full new file content here>
VAULTKIT_EOF

For content that may contain the heredoc marker, or for binary-safe writes, use python3:

python3 -c 'import sys; open(sys.argv[1], "w").write(sys.stdin.read())' \
  "$VAULT_PATH/path/to/file.md" <<'VAULTKIT_EOF'
<full new file content here>
VAULTKIT_EOF

4. Verify

stat -f "Birth: %SB | %N" "$VAULT_PATH/path/to/file.md"

Birth time should match what it was before the edit.

Fallback: targeted diff-style edit on a very large file

If rewriting the whole file is genuinely wasteful (e.g. a multi-megabyte note where you are changing a handful of lines), the old three-step pattern still works:

BIRTH=$(stat -f "%SB" -t "%m/%d/%Y %H:%M:%S" "$VAULT_PATH/path/to/file.md")
# ...use the Edit tool to apply the targeted change...
SetFile -d "$BIRTH" "$VAULT_PATH/path/to/file.md"

Prefer the in-place write above for anything typical. Reach for this fallback only when the file is large enough that reading and re-writing the whole thing is measurably expensive.

Notes

• $VAULT_PATH is the vault root obtained via obsidian vault=<VAULT> vault
• Edit, Write, and the SetFile -d dance are no longer part of the happy path — they are documented only as a fallback
• Shell > redirect, cat > file <<EOF, python3 open(p, "w"), and node fs.writeFileSync all write in place on macOS; Edit and Write do not