Connect Obsidian to Thunderbird

The outcome: the vault you already write in becomes the material your email is written from — without exporting, copying or syncing anything into another app.

atbridge Notes keeps notes as plain .md files in a folder you choose. So if you already keep a Markdown vault, there is no import step: point atbridge at that folder and it reads the same files you have been editing all along.

Point the Notes folder at your vault

In Thunderbird: Settings → Advanced → atbridge Notes folder, click Browse…, pick your vault folder, and Save. It takes effect immediately.

Caution

“Open folder” in the Notes editor is not the same setting. That only changes what the editor is browsing. The AI, the CLI and MCP all read the folder set in Settings → Advanced — if you only used “Open folder”, the AI is still reading your old notes folder.

Existing notes are not moved. Changing the folder repoints where new notes are saved and which folder is read; anything already in the old location stays where it is.

What to expect

The parts that matter work directly: your .md files are read and written in place, a .obsidian folder is ignored, and a note edited outside Thunderbird is picked up — the editor re-checks the file when you come back to it, so the two apps can share the same vault.

A few things are worth knowing before you point it at a vault you care about:

• Attachments are found under assets/. Files kept in a different attachments folder will not show in the Notes file list, and neither will formats other than Markdown.
• Extra frontmatter is not preserved on AI or CLI edits. atbridge keeps title, created_at, updated_at, source and tags. If your notes carry other properties — aliases, CSS classes, list-style tags, database-style fields — a note saved through the AI or the command line comes back without them. Editing in the atbridge Notes editor does not touch them.
• Note properties show up as text at the top of a note in the atbridge editor, because it has no properties view. It is preserved, it just looks like content.
• Links between notes are path-based here, so a link written by name elsewhere may not resolve the same way.

Tip

If your vault is precious, try it on a copy first — or keep the vault under version control, which makes any of the above trivially reversible.

Then it works exactly like Notes

Once the folder is pointed, there is nothing Obsidian-specific left: everything on Use your atbridge Notes applies — asking for a reply, handing over a specific note, keeping one live with Plug as Context.

Where to go next

• Use your atbridge Notes — what you can do once the folder is set
• atbridge Notes — the editor, links and audio notes
• Answer emails from your knowledge base — how this compares with a Vector Store