Import your Obsidian vault

Help / Brain

Bring a vault, or any folder of Markdown notes, into a pair's Brain. Every note becomes searchable by the people in that pair and their agents. Weighing up the ways to share an Obsidian vault with AI agents? That guide compares them.

Two ways to import

On the website

1. Open a pair and choose its Brain tab.
2. Drop your vault folder or a .zip on the drop zone, or press Choose folder or Upload .zip. (Some browsers can only upload a zip.)
3. Your browser reads the notes on your computer and shows a preview: notes, hubs, links and skipped files. You can rename or skip any top folder's hub. Nothing is sent yet.
4. Press Import. Next time, Sync again updates only what changed; unchanged notes are skipped.

With your agent or a terminal

Tell your agent "import my Obsidian vault into pairpipe". It finds the vaults Obsidian lists on your computer and shows you a preview. It can't say yes for you: your app asks you, or hands you one command to paste into a terminal.

Or run it yourself, for any folder:

pairpipe brain import <folder> [--pair name] [--dry-run] [--hub "folder=hub"] [--follow-links] [--archived] [--yes]

• --dry-run shows what would be sent and sends nothing. It works anywhere.
• --hub "folder=hub" puts everything under a folder into one hub. Repeat it for more folders.
• --follow-links also enters symlinks and Windows junctions. --archived includes an _archive folder.
• --yes skips the question, but the command still has to run in a terminal where you can see it. Without one, nothing is sent.

What gets imported

• Markdown (.md) files only. Images, PDFs and canvases are left out.
• Hidden folders such as .obsidian, plus .git, .trash, node_modules and a folder called "99 Excluded", are skipped. So is _archive, unless you pass --archived in the terminal.
• Files named like secrets (starting with .env or a dot, or containing "secret") and files over 4 MB are skipped.
• <private>…</private> blocks never leave your computer. They are removed before anything is sent.
• [[links]] become links in the Brain's graph, including [[Note|alias]] and [[Note#heading]].
• Hubs group notes. A note's own hubs: property wins; otherwise its top-level folder becomes the hub. Notes at the top of the vault go into a hub called vault-root.
• A note over 64 KB is split into linked parts, so nothing is lost.
• Re-importing updates only changed notes; unchanged ones are skipped. A note you edited in pairpipe, or one imported by someone else, is kept as it is.

Privacy and safety

• Who can read it: everyone in the pair and their agents.
• Your yes comes first. The website asks once, and again whenever the people in the pair change, and lists who they are. The terminal asks Import them? [y/N], unless you pass --yes. Run without a terminal (by an agent, say), it stops unless PAIRPIPE_ALLOW_NONINTERACTIVE=1 is set.
• Secrets are refused. pairpipe checks every note for common key and token formats (API keys, GitHub and Slack tokens, private keys, JSON web tokens). A note that matches is not saved, and the report names the kind of secret it saw. The rest of your vault still imports.

Limits

The plan of the pair's owner applies to everyone in it. Archived notes don't count, so archiving frees room.

• A .zip can be up to 200 MB. A single file over 4 MB is skipped.
• Notes are sent in batches of up to 100. If the server asks you to slow down, the import waits and carries on.

If something goes wrong

• A synced folder (OneDrive, iCloud) with links: ordinary synced files import fine. Symlinks and junctions are not followed unless you pass --follow-links. They can point outside the vault, so the command writes a list of each one and where it leads before sending anything.
• A note was refused: it looked like it held a key. Remove the key, or wrap it in <private>…</private>, and import again.
• A note was kept, not updated: it was edited in pairpipe, or imported by someone else. pairpipe never overwrites those.
• A big vault: keep the tab open. If it stops, import again: notes already in are skipped. Past your plan's note limit, extra notes are refused, so skip a folder or archive old notes.
• "No Markdown notes": pick the folder that holds your .md files, or upload it as a .zip.
• Your agent only prints a command: its app can't ask you directly. Paste the command into a terminal.

Back to Help