NotebookLM, but smarter.

An open-source NotebookLM alternative. Free to use, fork, and self-host.

noobbooklm.com

Thank you Delta Exchange for believing in NoobBook from day one.

Want to sponsor? See how

GrowthX - The community that helped shape this journey.

Built with: Claude & Claude Code | OpenAI | ElevenLabs | Pinecone | Tavily | Google AI

Powered by open-source: React | Vite | Flask | shadcn/ui | Tailwind CSS | Radix UI

NoobBook is a fully-featured NotebookLM alternative that you can run yourself. Upload documents, chat with your sources using RAG, and generate content with AI agents.

Core Features:

• Multi-modal source ingestion (PDF, DOCX, PPTX, images, audio, YouTube, URLs)
• RAG-powered chat with citations
• AI-generated content (audio overviews, mind maps, presentations, and more)
• Memory system for personalized responses
• Voice input and text-to-speech

NoobBook has 4 main concepts:

Everything is organized into projects. Each project has its own sources, chats, and studio outputs.

Upload documents and the system processes them for AI understanding:

Processing Pipeline:

Upload -> Raw file saved -> AI extracts text -> Chunked for RAG -> Embedded in Pinecone

RAG-powered Q&A with your sources:

User question
    -> AI searches relevant sources (hybrid: keyword + semantic)
    -> AI generates response with citations
    -> Citations link to specific chunks

Key features:

• Chunk-based citations
• Memory system (user preferences + project context)
• Voice input via ElevenLabs
• Conversation history per chat

Generate content from your sources using AI agents:

Frontend (React + Vite)
    |
    v
Backend API (Flask)
    |
    ├── Source Processing (upload, extract, chunk, embed)
    ├── Chat Service (RAG search, Claude API, citations)
    ├── Studio Services (content generation agents)
    └── Integrations (Claude, OpenAI, Pinecone, ElevenLabs, Gemini)
    |
    v
Data Storage (JSON files)

AI Services:

• Claude - Main LLM for chat, agents, content generation
• OpenAI - Embeddings for vector search
• Pinecone - Vector database for RAG
• ElevenLabs - Text-to-speech and transcription
• Gemini - Image generation
• Google Veo - Video generation

# macOS
brew install libreoffice ffmpeg
npx playwright install

# Ubuntu/Debian
sudo apt install libreoffice ffmpeg
npx playwright install

cd backend
python -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate  # or venv\Scripts\activate on Windows
pip install -r requirements.txt
python run.py             # http://localhost:5000

cd frontend
npm install
npm run dev               # http://localhost:5173

Create backend/.env or configure in Dashboard -> Settings:

Required:

• ANTHROPIC_API_KEY - Claude API
• OPENAI_API_KEY - Embeddings
• PINECONE_API_KEY + PINECONE_INDEX_NAME - Vector database

Optional:

• ELEVENLABS_API_KEY - Audio features
• TAVILY_API_KEY - Web search
• GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID + GOOGLE_CLIENT_SECRET - Google Drive import

Contributions welcome!

Branch strategy:

• main - Stable branch for testing and using NoobBook
• develop - Latest changes, all PRs go here

Quick start:

1. Fork the repo
2. Pull from develop
3. Create your branch
4. Open a PR to develop (not main)

See CONTRIBUTING.md for full details and CLAUDE.md for code guidelines.

License YOLO.v1.01

• New License type

Free to use:

• Fork it, self-host it, use it for yourself or your company

Want to commercialize it?

• Become an authorized seller: [email protected]
• Or provide a minimum sponsorship of $10,000 USD

If you commercialize without authorization... well, we're too busy building to chase you. But karma has a way of catching up.

Built with a $10,000 USD sponsorship grant.