# Obsidian Summarize

> Create paper summaries in Obsidian. Use when users want to summarize research papers, create literature notes, or add paper insights to their knowledge base.

- Skill: `varde80/obsidian-summarize` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 3 files)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add varde80/obsidian-summarize`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/varde80/obsidian-summarize/raw
- Safety review: pending
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: Research & Search
- Author: varde80 (https://skillmd.com/u/varde80)
- Updated: 2026-09-17
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/varde80/obsidian-summarize

---


# Obsidian Paper Summary Skill

Create structured paper summaries in your Obsidian vault.

## Prerequisites

Configuration file at `config/config.json` with Obsidian settings:
- `obsidian.vault_path`: Path to your Obsidian vault
- `obsidian.papers_folder`: Subfolder for paper notes (default: "Papers")

## Usage

Create a paper summary:

```bash
cd /Users/varde/code/arxiv-zotero-obsidian && python3 .claude/skills/obsidian-summarize/scripts/create_summary.py \
  --arxiv-id "2401.12345" \
  --title "Paper Title" \
  --authors "Author One,Author Two" \
  --abstract "Paper abstract..." \
  --summary "Your summary of the paper..."
```

## Available Options

| Option | Description | Required |
|--------|-------------|----------|
| `--arxiv-id` | arXiv paper ID | Yes |
| `--title` | Paper title | Yes |
| `--authors` | Comma-separated author names | Yes |
| `--abstract` | Original abstract | No |
| `--published` | Publication date | No |
| `--zotero-key` | Zotero item key for linking | No |
| `--summary` | Your summary | No |
| `--key-findings` | Pipe-separated findings | No |
| `--methodology` | Methodology notes | No |
| `--contributions` | Main contributions | No |
| `--limitations` | Paper limitations | No |
| `--future-work` | Future directions | No |
| `--personal-notes` | Your thoughts | No |
| `--tags` | Comma-separated tags | No |

## Examples

```bash
# Basic summary
python3 .claude/skills/obsidian-summarize/scripts/create_summary.py \
  --arxiv-id "1706.03762" \
  --title "Attention Is All You Need" \
  --authors "Ashish Vaswani,Noam Shazeer" \
  --abstract "The dominant sequence transduction models..." \
  --summary "Introduces the Transformer architecture..."

# Full summary with all fields
python3 .claude/skills/obsidian-summarize/scripts/create_summary.py \
  --arxiv-id "1706.03762" \
  --title "Attention Is All You Need" \
  --authors "Ashish Vaswani,Noam Shazeer" \
  --abstract "The dominant sequence transduction models..." \
  --published "2017-06-12" \
  --zotero-key "ABC123XYZ" \
  --summary "Introduces the Transformer architecture..." \
  --key-findings "Self-attention replaces recurrence|Achieves SOTA on translation|Parallelizable training" \
  --methodology "Encoder-decoder with multi-head attention" \
  --tags "transformer,attention,nlp"
```

## Note Structure

The created note includes:

1. **Frontmatter**: YAML metadata (title, authors, dates, links)
2. **Overview**: Quick reference callout box
3. **Abstract**: Original paper abstract
4. **Summary**: Your summary
5. **Key Findings**: Bullet points
6. **Methodology**: Method description
7. **Contributions**: Main contributions
8. **Limitations & Future Work**: Critical analysis
9. **Personal Notes**: Your thoughts
10. **Related Papers**: Space for linking other notes

## Output

Creates markdown file at: `{vault_path}/{papers_folder}/{YYYY-MM-DD}-{title-slug}.md`

## Integration Workflow

Typical workflow with other skills:

1. **arxiv-search**: Find papers on a topic
2. **zotero-add**: Add selected papers to Zotero (get item_key)
3. **obsidian-summarize**: Create summary note with Zotero link

```bash
# After adding to Zotero with item_key ABC123
python3 .claude/skills/obsidian-summarize/scripts/create_summary.py \
  --arxiv-id "2401.12345" \
  --title "Paper Title" \
  --authors "Author" \
  --zotero-key "ABC123" \
  --summary "Claude-generated summary here..."
```