An Open Source implementation of Notebook LM with more flexibility and features

Open Notebook

An open source, privacy-focused alternative to Google's Notebook LM!
Join our Discord server for help, to share workflow ideas, and suggest features!
Checkout our website »

📚 Get Started · 📖 User Guide · ✨ Features · 🚀 Deploy

Open Notebook is under active development! We're moving fast and making improvements every week. Your feedback is incredibly valuable to me during this exciting phase and it gives me motivation to keep improving and building this amazing tool. Please feel free to star the project if you find it useful, and don't hesitate to reach out with any questions or suggestions. I'm excited to see how you'll use it and what ideas you'll bring to the project! Let's build something amazing together! 🚀

An open source, privacy-focused alternative to Google's Notebook LM. Why give Google more of our data when we can take control of our own research workflows?

In a world dominated by Artificial Intelligence, having the ability to think 🧠 and acquire new knowledge 💡, is a skill that should not be a privilege for a few, nor restricted to a single provider.

Open Notebook empowers you to:

• 🔒 Control your data - Keep your research private and secure
• 🤖 Choose your AI models - Support for 16+ providers including OpenAI, Anthropic, Ollama, LM Studio, and more
• 📚 Organize multi-modal content - PDFs, videos, audio, web pages, and more
• 🎙️ Generate professional podcasts - Advanced multi-speaker podcast generation
• 🔍 Search intelligently - Full-text and vector search across all your content
• 💬 Chat with context - AI conversations powered by your research

Learn more about our project at https://www.open-notebook.ai

Why Choose Open Notebook?

• 🔒 Privacy First: Your sensitive research stays completely private
• 💰 Cost Control: Choose cheaper AI providers or run locally with Ollama
• 🎙️ Better Podcasts: Full script control and multi-speaker flexibility vs limited 2-speaker deep-dive format
• 🔧 Unlimited Customization: Modify, extend, and integrate as needed
• 🌐 No Vendor Lock-in: Switch providers, deploy anywhere, own your data

Ready to try Open Notebook? Choose your preferred method:

# Create a new directory for your Open Notebook installation
mkdir open-notebook
cd open-notebook

# Using Docker - Get started in 2 minutes
docker run -d \
  --name open-notebook \
  -p 8502:8502 -p 5055:5055 \
  -v ./notebook_data:/app/data \
  -v ./surreal_data:/mydata \
  -e OPENAI_API_KEY=your_key \
  lfnovo/open_notebook:latest-single

What gets created:

open-notebook/
├── notebook_data/     # Your notebooks and research content
└── surreal_data/      # Database files

Access your installation:

• 🖥️ Main Interface: http://localhost:8502 (Streamlit UI)
• 🔧 API Access: http://localhost:5055 (REST API)
• 📚 API Documentation: http://localhost:5055/docs (Interactive Swagger UI)

⚠️ Important:

1. Run from a dedicated folder: Create and run this from inside a new open-notebook folder so your data volumes are properly organized
2. Volume persistence: The volumes (-v ./notebook_data:/app/data and -v ./surreal_data:/mydata) are essential to persist your data between container restarts. Without them, you'll lose all your notebooks and research when the container stops.

For development or customization:

git clone https://github.com/lfnovo/open-notebook
cd open-notebook
make start-all

• 🤖 AI Installation Assistant: We have a CustomGPT built to help you install Open Notebook - it will guide you through each step!
• New to Open Notebook? Start with our Getting Started Guide
• Need installation help? Check our Installation Guide
• Want to see it in action? Try our Quick Start Tutorial

Thanks to the Esperanto library, we support this providers out of the box!

*Supports LM Studio and any OpenAI-compatible endpoint

• 🔒 Privacy-First: Your data stays under your control - no cloud dependencies
• 🎯 Multi-Notebook Organization: Manage multiple research projects seamlessly
• 📚 Universal Content Support: PDFs, videos, audio, web pages, Office docs, and more
• 🤖 Multi-Model AI Support: 16+ providers including OpenAI, Anthropic, Ollama, Google, LM Studio, and more
• 🎙️ Professional Podcast Generation: Advanced multi-speaker podcasts with Episode Profiles
• 🔍 Intelligent Search: Full-text and vector search across all your content
• 💬 Context-Aware Chat: AI conversations powered by your research materials
• 📝 AI-Assisted Notes: Generate insights or write notes manually

• ⚡ Reasoning Model Support: Full support for thinking models like DeepSeek-R1 and Qwen3
• 🔧 Content Transformations: Powerful customizable actions to summarize and extract insights
• 🌐 Comprehensive REST API: Full programmatic access for custom integrations
• 🔐 Optional Password Protection: Secure public deployments with authentication
• 📊 Fine-Grained Context Control: Choose exactly what to share with AI models
• 📎 Citations: Get answers with proper source citations

1. Sources: Manage all your research materials
2. Notes: Create manual or AI-generated notes
3. Chat: Converse with AI using your content as context

• 📖 Introduction - Learn what Open Notebook offers
• ⚡ Quick Start - Get up and running in 5 minutes
• 🔧 Installation - Comprehensive setup guide
• 🎯 Your First Notebook - Step-by-step tutorial

• 📱 Interface Overview - Understanding the layout
• 📚 Notebooks - Organizing your research
• 📄 Sources - Managing content types
• 📝 Notes - Creating and managing notes
• 💬 Chat - AI conversations
• 🔍 Search - Finding information

• 🎙️ Podcast Generation - Create professional podcasts
• 🔧 Content Transformations - Customize content processing
• 🤖 AI Models - AI model configuration
• 🔧 REST API Reference - Complete API documentation
• 🔐 Security - Password protection and privacy
• 🚀 Deployment - Complete deployment guides for all scenarios

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• React Frontend: Modern React-based frontend to replace Streamlit
• Live Front-End Updates: Real-time UI updates for smoother experience
• Async Processing: Faster UI through asynchronous content processing
• Cross-Notebook Sources: Reuse research materials across projects
• Bookmark Integration: Connect with your favorite bookmarking apps

• Comprehensive REST API: Full programmatic access to all functionality
• Multi-Model Support: 16+ AI providers including OpenAI, Anthropic, Ollama, LM Studio
• Advanced Podcast Generator: Professional multi-speaker podcasts with Episode Profiles
• Content Transformations: Powerful customizable actions for content processing
• Enhanced Citations: Improved layout and finer control for source citations
• Multiple Chat Sessions: Manage different conversations within notebooks

See the open issues for a full list of proposed features and known issues.

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• 💬 Discord Server - Get help, share ideas, and connect with other users
• 🐛 GitHub Issues - Report bugs and request features
• ⭐ Star this repo - Show your support and help others discover Open Notebook

We welcome contributions! We're especially looking for help with:

• Frontend Development: Help build a modern React-based UI (planned replacement for current Streamlit interface)
• Testing & Bug Fixes: Make Open Notebook more robust
• Feature Development: Build the coolest research tool together
• Documentation: Improve guides and tutorials

Current Tech Stack: Python, FastAPI, SurrealDB, Streamlit
Future Roadmap: React frontend, enhanced real-time updates

See our Contributing Guide for detailed information on how to get started.

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Open Notebook is MIT licensed. See the LICENSE file for details.

Luis Novo - @lfnovo

Community Support:

• 💬 Discord Server - Get help, share ideas, and connect with users
• 🐛 GitHub Issues - Report bugs and request features
• 🌐 Website - Learn more about the project

Open Notebook is built on the shoulders of amazing open-source projects:

• Podcast Creator - Advanced podcast generation capabilities
• Surreal Commands - Background job processing
• Content Core - Content processing and management
• Esperanto - Multi-provider AI model abstraction
• Docling - Document processing and parsing

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