| name | notebooklm |
| description | Automate Google NotebookLM to generate AI podcasts, audio overviews, study guides, FAQs, briefing docs, and deep dives from YouTube, PDFs, URLs, audio, and images. Use for "create a podcast", "audio overview", "study guide", conversational AI-host audio, or chatting/querying multiple documents as one knowledge base. Triggers - "notebooklm", "audio briefing", "podcast about", "deep dive from". NOT for plain transcription, TTS, audio editing, or basic summarization. |
NotebookLM Automation
Complete programmatic access to Google NotebookLM—including capabilities not exposed in the web UI. Create notebooks, add sources (URLs, YouTube, PDFs, audio, video, images), chat with content, generate all artifact types, and download results in multiple formats.
Reference Files
Read these as needed rather than upfront:
references/workflows.md — Step-by-step workflows (podcast, document analysis, bulk import, deep research)references/generation.md — All generation types, options, and features beyond the web UIreferences/command-outputs.md — JSON output formats, schemas, citation handlingreferences/troubleshooting.md — Error handling, exit codes, known limitations, processing timesreferences/language.md — Language configuration for artifact generation
Installation
With uv (Recommended):
uv tool install notebooklm-py
Prerequisites
CI/CD, Multiple Accounts, and Parallel Agents
For automated environments, multiple accounts, or parallel agent workflows:
| Variable | Purpose |
|---|
NOTEBOOKLM_HOME | Custom config directory (default: ~/.notebooklm) |
NOTEBOOKLM_AUTH_JSON | Inline auth JSON - no file writes needed |
CI/CD setup: Set NOTEBOOKLM_AUTH_JSON from a secret containing your storage_state.json contents.
Multiple accounts: Use different NOTEBOOKLM_HOME directories per account.
Parallel agents: The CLI stores notebook context in a shared file (~/.notebooklm/context.json). Multiple concurrent agents using notebooklm use can overwrite each other's context.
Solutions for parallel workflows:
- Always use explicit notebook ID (recommended): Pass
-n <notebook_id> (for wait/download commands) or --notebook <notebook_id> (for others) instead of relying on use
- Per-agent isolation: Set unique
NOTEBOOKLM_HOME per agent: export NOTEBOOKLM_HOME=/tmp/agent-$ID
- Use full UUIDs: Avoid partial IDs in automation (they can become ambiguous)
Agent Setup Verification
Before starting workflows, verify the CLI is ready:
notebooklm status → Should show "Authenticated as: email@..."notebooklm list --json → Should return valid JSON (even if empty notebooks list)- If either fails → Run
notebooklm login
When This Skill Activates
Explicit: User says "/notebooklm", "use notebooklm", or mentions the tool by name
Intent detection: Recognize requests like:
- "Create a podcast about [topic]"
- "Summarize these URLs/documents"
- "Generate a quiz from my research"
- "Turn this into an audio overview"
- "Create flashcards for studying"
- "Generate a video explainer"
- "Make an infographic"
- "Create a mind map of the concepts"
- "Download the quiz as markdown"
- "Add these sources to NotebookLM"
Autonomy Rules
Run automatically (no confirmation):
notebooklm status - check contextnotebooklm auth check - diagnose auth issuesnotebooklm list - list notebooksnotebooklm source list - list sourcesnotebooklm artifact list - list artifactsnotebooklm language list - list supported languagesnotebooklm language get - get current languagenotebooklm language set - set language (global setting)notebooklm artifact wait - wait for artifact completion (in subagent context)notebooklm source wait - wait for source processing (in subagent context)notebooklm research status - check research statusnotebooklm research wait - wait for research (in subagent context)notebooklm use <id> - set context (⚠️ SINGLE-AGENT ONLY - use -n flag in parallel workflows)notebooklm create - create notebooknotebooklm ask "..." - chat queriesnotebooklm source add - add sources
Ask before running:
notebooklm delete - destructivenotebooklm generate * - long-running, may failnotebooklm download * - writes to filesystemnotebooklm artifact wait - long-running (when in main conversation)notebooklm source wait - long-running (when in main conversation)notebooklm research wait - long-running (when in main conversation)
Quick Reference
| Task | Command |
|---|
| Authenticate | notebooklm login |
| Diagnose auth issues | notebooklm auth check |
| Diagnose auth (full) | notebooklm auth check --test |
| List notebooks | notebooklm list |
| Create notebook | notebooklm create "Title" |
| Set context | notebooklm use <notebook_id> |
| Show context | notebooklm status |
| Add URL source | notebooklm source add "https://..." |
| Add file | notebooklm source add ./file.pdf |
| Add YouTube | notebooklm source add "https://youtube.com/..." |
| List sources | notebooklm source list |
| Wait for source processing | notebooklm source wait <source_id> |
| Web research (fast) | notebooklm source add-research "query" |
| Web research (deep) | notebooklm source add-research "query" --mode deep --no-wait |
| Check research status | notebooklm research status |
| Wait for research | notebooklm research wait --import-all |
| Chat | notebooklm ask "question" |
| Chat (new conversation) | notebooklm ask "question" --new |
| Chat (specific sources) | notebooklm ask "question" -s src_id1 -s src_id2 |
| Chat (with references) | notebooklm ask "question" --json |
| Get source fulltext | notebooklm source fulltext <source_id> |
| Get source guide | notebooklm source guide <source_id> |
| Generate podcast | notebooklm generate audio "instructions" |
| Generate podcast (JSON) | notebooklm generate audio --json |
| Generate podcast (specific sources) | notebooklm generate audio -s src_id1 -s src_id2 |
| Generate video | notebooklm generate video "instructions" |
| Generate quiz | notebooklm generate quiz |
| Check artifact status | notebooklm artifact list |
| Wait for completion | notebooklm artifact wait <artifact_id> |
| Download audio | notebooklm download audio ./output.mp3 |
| Download video | notebooklm download video ./output.mp4 |
| Download report | notebooklm download report ./report.md |
| Download mind map | notebooklm download mind-map ./map.json |
| Download data table | notebooklm download data-table ./data.csv |
| Download quiz | notebooklm download quiz quiz.json |
| Download quiz (markdown) | notebooklm download quiz --format markdown quiz.md |
| Download flashcards | notebooklm download flashcards cards.json |
| Download flashcards (markdown) | notebooklm download flashcards --format markdown cards.md |
| Delete notebook | notebooklm notebook delete <id> |
| List languages | notebooklm language list |
| Get language | notebooklm language get |
| Set language | notebooklm language set zh_Hans |
Parallel safety: Use explicit notebook IDs in parallel workflows. Commands supporting -n shorthand: artifact wait, source wait, research wait/status, download *. Download commands also support -a/--artifact. Other commands use --notebook. For chat, use --new to start fresh conversations (avoids conversation ID conflicts).
Partial IDs: Use first 6+ characters of UUIDs. Must be unique prefix (fails if ambiguous). Works for: use, delete, wait commands. For automation, prefer full UUIDs to avoid ambiguity.
Output Style
Progress updates: Brief status for each step:
- "Creating notebook 'Research: AI'..."
- "Adding source: https://example.com..."
- "Starting audio generation... (task ID: abc123)"
Fire-and-forget for long operations:
- Start generation, return artifact ID immediately
- Do NOT poll or wait in main conversation - generation takes 5-45 minutes (see
references/troubleshooting.md)
- User checks status manually, OR use subagent with
artifact wait
