# Feynman AI research Assistant plugin for Obsidian

> Source: <https://community.obsidian.md/plugins/feynman-research-agent>
> Published: 2026-05-25 16:30:55+00:00

A research agent for your vault. Runs locally in Docker against your own Anthropic API key.

A research agent for your vault. Runs locally in Docker against your own Anthropic API key.

`sk-ant-...`

)Once the plugin is installed, configured, and the local Docker server is running:

`/`

in the input to browse the built-in workflows — `/deepresearch`

, `/lit`

(literature review), `/audit`

, `/recipe`

, `/review`

, and several others. Each one opens a small form with the arguments it expects (e.g. a `topic`

field).`<vault>/Feynman/outputs/`

, `<vault>/Feynman/notes/`

, and `<vault>/Feynman/papers/`

as regular markdown files. Click the artifact link in the chat panel to jump straight to the file in Obsidian.You can also invoke a workflow directly from the command palette (e.g. **Feynman: Deep research…**) without opening the chat panel first — useful when a vault note is the topic and you want to pass `activeFile`

or the current selection as context.

```
git clone https://github.com/icarian-systems/feynman-research-agent.git
cd feynman-research-agent
npm install
npm run build
```

Then copy `main.js`

, `manifest.json`

, and `styles.css`

into your vault at:

```
<vault>/.obsidian/plugins/feynman-research-agent/
```

Reload Obsidian, open **Settings → Community plugins**, and enable **Feynman**.

If you'd rather not build locally, install via [BRAT](https://github.com/TfTHacker/obsidian42-brat): add this repository as a beta plugin and BRAT will fetch the release artifacts for you.

After enabling the plugin, follow [ docs/SETUP.md](docs/SETUP.md) to pull the Docker image, configure your Anthropic key, and run your first workflow.

Read this carefully before using the plugin.

`~/.feynman/secrets.json`

(file mode `0600`

). The plugin does not encrypt this file. Because secrets live outside the vault, they are `<vault>/.obsidian/plugins/feynman-research-agent/data.json`

.`127.0.0.1`

. There is no cloud/managed-Modal tier shipped in v1 — that mode is disabled in settings until a later release.`FEYNMAN_AUTH_TOKEN`

and writes it into the container env-file. Without that header any other process on your machine (browser tabs included) gets `401 Unauthorized`

from `http://127.0.0.1:7777`

. Self-hosted users must set the same env var on their server and paste the value into Settings.`http://`

for any host that isn't `127.0.0.1`

, `localhost`

, or `::1`

, so the bearer token doesn't fly in plaintext.`api.getwaitlist.com`

If you don't want your keys leaving the device on which you typed them, the default setup already keeps them on-device: `~/.feynman/secrets.json`

is outside any vault and is never touched by Obsidian Sync.

The plugin uses one non-public API to deep-link into its own settings tab from inline "Open settings" affordances (the `app.setting.open()`

/ `app.setting.openTabById(...)`

pair). The calls are wrapped in `try/catch`

; if a future Obsidian release removes that surface the plugin falls back to a Notice that says "Open Settings → Community plugins → Feynman". No functionality is lost; the deep link just becomes a manual click.

[MIT](LICENSE).