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arthuryangx/nano-notebooklm

Analysis updated 2026-05-18

41PythonAudience · researcherComplexity · 2/5LicenseSetup · moderate

TLDR

A self-hosted, open-source study assistant that turns your course materials into a searchable, citation-linked knowledge base you can chat with.

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((nano-NotebookLM))
    What it does
      Builds knowledge base
      Citation linked chat
      Practice quizzes
    Tech stack
      Python
      Self hosted
    Use cases
      Study from PDFs
      Exam prep mode
      LaTeX notes
    Audience
      Students
      Researchers
    AI providers
      OpenAI
      Anthropic
      Local models

Code map

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filefunction / class

What do people build with it?

USE CASE 1

Upload PDFs, slides, Word docs, or Markdown notes and chat with them, with answers linked to the source page.

USE CASE 2

Generate structured LaTeX study notes from your uploaded course materials.

USE CASE 3

Take auto-generated practice quizzes and get follow-up questions targeting the topics you got wrong.

USE CASE 4

Explore and edit a visual knowledge graph of the concepts extracted from your documents.

What is it built with?

Python

How does it compare?

arthuryangx/nano-notebooklmaimer-zero/redforge-aiashuigordon/stata-cli
Stars414141
LanguagePythonPythonPython
Setup difficultymoderatemoderatemoderate
Complexity2/54/53/5
Audienceresearcherdeveloperresearcher

Figures from each repo's GitHub metadata at analysis time.

How do you get it running?

Difficulty · moderate Time to first run · 30min

Requires at least one AI provider API key, or a local model via Ollama or LM Studio, to enable chat and quiz features.

Apache 2.0: use, modify, and distribute freely, including commercially, as long as you keep copyright and license notices.

In plain English

nano-NotebookLM is a self-hosted, open-source study assistant you run on your own computer or server. You point it at course materials (PDFs, PowerPoint files, Word documents, or Markdown files) and it builds a searchable knowledge base from them. You can then chat with the material and get answers that link back to the exact page where the information came from, so you can verify what the AI says. The tool handles several study-related tasks from one interface. It can produce structured notes in LaTeX format, which is a document format common in academic and technical fields. It generates practice quizzes and an exam-preparation mode that tracks which questions you answered incorrectly and automatically creates follow-up variants to help you practice your weak spots. There is also an editable knowledge graph, a visual map of concepts extracted from your documents, which you can rearrange and annotate by hand. A key design choice is flexibility in which AI model does the work. You can connect it to OpenAI, Anthropic Claude, Google Gemini, DeepSeek, or more than a dozen other cloud providers, or run a local model through tools like Ollama or LM Studio. Swapping providers happens through a settings panel in the browser without restarting the server. This means your study materials stay on your own machine rather than being sent to a fixed third-party service. Setup is a standard Python install. After cloning the repository, you install dependencies, copy an environment file, fill in at least one API key, and start the server. Optional extras include a heavier PDF extractor for scanned documents and a LaTeX compiler if you want to export notes as PDFs. The project is Apache 2.0 licensed and accepts community contributions. It is aimed at students and researchers who want the citation-linked chat and quiz features of Google NotebookLM but prefer to keep their data local and choose their own AI provider.

Copy-paste prompts

Prompt 1
Help me set up nano-NotebookLM locally with my own Anthropic API key.
Prompt 2
Generate a practice quiz from my uploaded lecture slides using nano-NotebookLM.
Prompt 3
Explain how to connect a local Ollama model to nano-NotebookLM instead of a cloud API.
Prompt 4
Walk me through exporting LaTeX study notes from nano-NotebookLM.

Frequently asked questions

What is nano-notebooklm?

A self-hosted, open-source study assistant that turns your course materials into a searchable, citation-linked knowledge base you can chat with.

What language is nano-notebooklm written in?

Mainly Python. The stack also includes Python.

What license does nano-notebooklm use?

Apache 2.0: use, modify, and distribute freely, including commercially, as long as you keep copyright and license notices.

How hard is nano-notebooklm to set up?

Setup difficulty is rated moderate, with roughly 30min to a first successful run.

Who is nano-notebooklm for?

Mainly researcher.

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