notebooklm-mcp

An MCP server that gives Claude (and any MCP-compatible agent) full access to Google NotebookLM — create notebooks, upload sources, ask questions, and generate audio overviews, quizzes, flashcards, mind maps, slide decks, videos, and reports.

Stability note: This server wraps notebooklm-py, which reverse-engineers NotebookLM's unofficial API. It works well for personal and experimental use, but may break without notice if Google changes their API. Not recommended for production/business-critical workflows.

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What You Can Do

Category	Examples
Notebooks	Create, rename, delete, list
Sources	Add URLs, upload files, web research, get full text
Q&A	Ask questions grounded in your sources
Generate	Audio overview, quiz, flashcards, mind map, slides, report, video
Download	Save any generated artifact to a local file

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Quick Start

Prerequisites

• Python 3.10+ — check with python3 --version
• uv (recommended) — install with curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh
• A Google account with NotebookLM access

1. Clone the repo

git clone https://github.com/mulyg/notebooklm-mcp
cd notebooklm-mcp

2. Install dependencies

# With uv (recommended — handles venv automatically)
uv sync

# Or with pip
pip install "notebooklm-py[browser]" "mcp[cli]" pydantic httpx
playwright install chromium

Important: The playwright install chromium step is required for authentication. If you skip it, the server will fail with a browser error.

3. Authenticate with Google

notebooklm login

This opens a browser window to sign in to your Google account. Your session is stored locally — you only need to do this once (sessions last ~30 days).

notebooklm auth check    # verify it worked

What happens under the hood: notebooklm-py uses browser automation (Playwright) to authenticate with Google and store your session cookies in ~/.notebooklm/. No password is saved — only the session token.

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Connecting to Agent Environments

Claude Code (CLI)

Add to .mcp.json in your project root, or to ~/.claude/claude_desktop_config.json for global use:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "notebooklm": {
      "command": "uv",
      "args": ["run", "/path/to/notebooklm-mcp/server.py"]
    }
  }
}

Claude Desktop — macOS

Edit ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "notebooklm": {
      "command": "uv",
      "args": ["run", "/Users/yourname/notebooklm-mcp/server.py"]
    }
  }
}

Claude Desktop — Windows

Edit %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "notebooklm": {
      "command": "uv",
      "args": ["run", "C:\\Users\\YourName\\notebooklm-mcp\\server.py"]
    }
  }
}

Note: On Windows, use double backslashes (\\) in JSON paths.

Cursor / Windsurf / other MCP clients

Most MCP-compatible editors use the same command + args format. Point it at server.py using the pattern above. Consult your editor's MCP documentation for the config file location.

Without uv

If you prefer plain Python:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "notebooklm": {
      "command": "python",
      "args": ["/path/to/notebooklm-mcp/server.py"]
    }
  }
}

Make sure the Python environment that has the dependencies installed is the one being used.

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How It Works

Claude / MCP client
       ↓  MCP protocol (stdio)
  server.py  (FastMCP)
       ↓  Python API
  notebooklm-py
       ↓  browser automation (Playwright)
  NotebookLM web API
       ↓
  Google's servers

server.py uses FastMCP to expose 24 tools over the MCP stdio transport. Each tool call passes through notebooklm-py, which uses a headless Chromium browser to talk to NotebookLM's undocumented internal API.

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The Generate → Download Pattern

Audio, quiz, flashcards, slides, reports, and videos are generated asynchronously. Calling generate_* starts the generation task. Call download_* to save the result to disk once it's ready.

In practice, ask Claude to do both steps in a single prompt:

"Generate a long deep-dive audio overview of my 'Product Strategy' notebook, then download it to ~/Downloads/strategy.mp3"

Claude will call notebooklm_generate_audio then notebooklm_download_audio automatically.

Mind maps are the exception — notebooklm_generate_mind_map returns the JSON data directly without a separate download step.

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Available Tools (24 total)

Start Here

Tool	What It Does
notebooklm_list_notebooks	See all your notebooks and their IDs
notebooklm_create_notebook	Create a new empty notebook
notebooklm_rename_notebook	Rename a notebook
notebooklm_delete_notebook	Delete a notebook permanently

Add Content to a Notebook

Tool	What It Does
notebooklm_add_url_source	Add a web page, article, or YouTube URL
notebooklm_add_file_source	Upload a PDF, DOCX, TXT, audio, video, or image
notebooklm_research	Search the web and auto-import relevant sources
notebooklm_list_sources	See all sources in a notebook
notebooklm_get_source_fulltext	Read the text NotebookLM extracted from a source
notebooklm_refresh_source	Re-fetch a source if the original changed

Ask Questions

Tool	What It Does
notebooklm_ask	Ask a question — answer is grounded in your sources

Generate Content (Step 1 of 2)

Tool	Options
notebooklm_generate_audio	format: deep-dive, brief, critique, debate · length: short, medium, long
notebooklm_generate_quiz	difficulty: easy, medium, hard
notebooklm_generate_flashcards	—
notebooklm_generate_mind_map	Returns JSON directly (no download needed)
notebooklm_generate_slide_deck	format: detailed, presenter
notebooklm_generate_report	template: briefing, study-guide, blog-post, custom
notebooklm_generate_video	format: explainer, brief, cinematic · style: auto, classic, whiteboard, kawaii, anime, watercolor, retro, heritage, paper-craft

Download Results (Step 2 of 2)

Tool	Output
notebooklm_download_audio	.mp3
notebooklm_download_quiz	.json or .md (inferred from file extension)
notebooklm_download_flashcards	.json or .md
notebooklm_download_mind_map	.json
notebooklm_download_slides	.pdf or .pptx
notebooklm_download_video	.mp4

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Example Workflows

Upload & Query

"Create a notebook called 'AI Research', add this arxiv paper URL, then summarise the key findings."

Study Mode

"Generate flashcards and a quiz from my 'Biology 101' notebook. Make the quiz hard. Download both to ~/Downloads as JSON files."

Podcast Creation

"Generate a long deep-dive audio overview of my 'Product Strategy' notebook, then download it to ~/Downloads/strategy-podcast.mp3"

Product Feedback Analysis

"Create a 'Q1 Feedback' notebook. Add these 3 URLs from our support forum. Then ask: what are the top 5 complaints? Finally generate a briefing report."

Research Pipeline

"Research 'gen AI product management trends'. Import the results into my 'PM Research' notebook. Then generate a detailed slide deck from those sources."

With Filesystem MCP (composability)

If you also have the filesystem MCP server active:

"List all PDFs in ~/Documents/reports. Add each one to my 'Annual Reviews' notebook. Then ask: what were the key outcomes across all reports?"

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File Upload Guidelines

Supported formats: PDF, DOCX, TXT, audio (MP3, WAV, M4A), video (MP4, MOV), images (PNG, JPG)

Approximate size limits:

• Documents (PDF, DOCX, TXT): up to ~100 MB
• Audio/Video: up to ~500 MB (processing can take 5–10 minutes)
• Images: up to ~50 MB

Tips:

• For large PDFs, consider splitting into sections first
• ~ paths are supported (e.g. ~/Downloads/paper.pdf)
• Video uploads are slower — extracting audio with ffmpeg first can speed things up

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Limitations & Caveats

• Unofficial API — notebooklm-py reverse-engineers NotebookLM's private API. Google may change it without notice, breaking the server.
• Experimental only — Not suitable for production or business-critical workflows.
• Rate limiting — NotebookLM has undocumented rate limits. If you hit errors, wait a few minutes and retry.
• Audio generation is slow — Expect 3–7 minutes per audio overview.
• Research polling — The notebooklm_research tool polls for up to 5 minutes. Deep research may occasionally time out; check notebooklm_list_sources afterward to verify.
• No official Google support — This project is not affiliated with or endorsed by Google.

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Session Management

Check if your session is active:

notebooklm auth check

Re-authenticate (session expired):

notebooklm login

Reset and start fresh:

rm -rf ~/.notebooklm/
notebooklm login

Clean up test notebooks:

"List my notebooks and delete the ones with 'test' in the name."

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Troubleshooting

Authentication failed Your session has expired. Run notebooklm login again.

Browser not installed / Playwright error

playwright install chromium

File not found Use the full absolute path (e.g. /Users/you/docs/paper.pdf or ~/docs/paper.pdf).

Output directory does not exist Make sure the parent directory of your output_path exists before downloading.

mkdir -p ~/Downloads

Audio/video generation times out Audio takes 3–7 minutes; video can take longer. Retry once — the task may still be running in NotebookLM. You can also check https://notebooklm.google.com directly to see if generation completed.

The underlying APIs changed Check for a new release of notebooklm-py and update:

pip install --upgrade notebooklm-py
# or with uv:
uv sync --upgrade

Python version too old

python3 --version   # must be 3.10+

Install Python 3.10+ from python.org or via your package manager.

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License

MIT