obsidian-mcp-server stuck at 'Waiting for server to respond to initialize request'

6 answers

• Best answerAgentArmorHQ teamTeam4d ago

  Status: Closed by the maintainer as addressed by the v3.0 rewrite; v3.1.7 was the current release at closing. On v1.x/v2.x no confirmed fix for this specific stall appears in the thread.

  The maintainer's first suggestion was to set OBSIDIAN_PROTOCOL to "https" (with the s), keep "VERIFY_SSL": "false", and verify the port matches what the Local REST API extension shows inside Obsidian. The reporter never confirmed whether that helped. In the v3.0 rewrite, the legacy OBSIDIAN_PROTOCOL / OBSIDIAN_HOST / OBSIDIAN_PORT variables were collapsed into a single OBSIDIAN_BASE_URL (default http://127.0.0.1:27123), and the v2 stdio transport that hung on initialize was replaced by @hono/mcp via @cyanheads/mcp-ts-core. The maintainer closed the issue saying both problems in the thread are addressed by v3.0.

  A separate VS Code Copilot Chat failure (Failed to validate tool 590_obsidian_update_properties: TypeError: Cannot use 'in' operator to search for 'type' in true) prompted a related fix in commit 2b06976, with the maintainer asking the reporter to update to v1.5.3 — but a later comment reported the same error persisting in Copilot Chat, so that fix is not confirmed here. One macOS user got Copilot Chat working by removing "custom" properties from the codebase. In v3, obsidian_update_properties is gone, replaced by obsidian_manage_frontmatter.

  Security note: "VERIFY_SSL": "false" disables TLS certificate verification; avoid shipping that setting in shared config.

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• AgentArmorHQ teamTeam4d ago

  What a GitHub user tried on GitHub (Didn't work)

  Reporter configured OBSIDIAN_PROTOCOL=http, OBSIDIAN_HOST=127.0.0.1, OBSIDIAN_PORT=27123 with VERIFY_SSL=false and Obsidian's Local REST API set to HTTP; the VS Code MCP client stayed stuck at Waiting for server to respond to 'initialize' request while a plain GET to / returned OK.

  Source: https://github.com/cyanheads/obsidian-mcp-server/issues/5 (opens external site) ↗

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• AgentArmorHQ teamTeam4d ago

  What @cyanheads tried on GitHub (Outcome unclear)

  Maintainer suggested setting OBSIDIAN_PROTOCOL to https (with the s), keeping VERIFY_SSL=false, and verifying the port matches the one shown in the Obsidian API extension. The reporter did not confirm the result.

  Source: https://github.com/cyanheads/obsidian-mcp-server/issues/5#issuecomment-2800121012 (opens external site) ↗

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• AgentArmorHQ teamTeam4d ago

  What @magnusquest tried on GitHub (Didn't work)

  A second user hit a different failure with VS Code Copilot Chat Agent while running debug.js: Failed to validate tool 590_obsidian_update_properties: TypeError: Cannot use 'in' operator to search for 'type' in true.

  Source: https://github.com/cyanheads/obsidian-mcp-server/issues/5#issuecomment-2800073344 (opens external site) ↗

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• AgentArmorHQ teamTeam4d ago

  What @cyanheads tried on GitHub (Outcome unclear)

  Maintainer applied a related fix in commit 2b06976 and asked the user to update to v1.5.3; a later comment reported the same error persisting in Copilot Chat, so the fix is not confirmed in the thread.

  Source: https://github.com/cyanheads/obsidian-mcp-server/issues/5#issuecomment-2800120618 (opens external site) ↗

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• AgentArmorHQ teamTeam4d ago

  What @magnusquest tried on GitHub (Worked)

  A user on macOS got VS Code Copilot Chat working by removing "custom" properties from the codebase, pointing to their fork for context.

  Source: https://github.com/cyanheads/obsidian-mcp-server/issues/5#issuecomment-2800455080 (opens external site) ↗

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