Build your own NotebookLM with Claude Code

An AI research notebook over your sources: upload PDFs and links as sources, chat grounded in sources with citations, summaries and study guides and more.

1–2 weeksMore screens, accounts and a backend

The Claude Code prompt

Build my own take on NotebookLM: an AI research notebook over your sources. Give it an original name, logo, colours and copy, and do not use NotebookLM's name, branding or assets.

Version one should have:
- Upload PDFs and links as sources
- Chat grounded in sources with citations
- Summaries and study guides
- Audio overview
- Notes

The hard part: Retrieval. Chunk sources, embed them and cite chunks.

How to build it:
1. Read this folder first. If it is empty, set up Next.js (App Router, TypeScript, Tailwind) with Postgres through Prisma or Supabase, and Supabase Auth or Auth.js for sign-in. Write a short PLAN.md with the data model, screens, third-party services and what you are leaving out of version one.
2. Build the core loop end to end before anything else: upload PDFs and links as sources, working with real data saved to the database.
3. Add the rest of the features one at a time, and seed realistic demo data so every screen looks alive.
4. Keep API keys in environment variables, and put any paid service behind a small interface with a local stub, so the app runs on a fresh machine without accounts.
5. Run it, click through every screen on desktop and mobile widths, fix what breaks, and finish with a summary of what works, what is stubbed and how to deploy it.

Paste it into Claude Code in an empty folder. It plans first, so read PLAN.md and steer before it starts building.

Version one

  • Upload PDFs and links as sources
  • Chat grounded in sources with citations
  • Summaries and study guides
  • Audio overview
  • Notes

The hard part

Retrieval. Chunk sources, embed them and cite chunks.

Make it yours: a niche NotebookLM ignores, an original name and brand, and one feature it does badly done well.

More to build

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