NoteWorks - Open NotebookLM Alternative

AI Knowledge Workspace with Multi-Model Support, Deep Search & Chinese-First Experience

🌐 Live Demo · 📖 Documentation · 🐛 Report Bug · 💬 Community · 🇨🇳 中文文档

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✨ What is NoteWorks?

NoteWorks is an open-source AI research workspace — a self-hosted alternative to Google's NotebookLM. It lets you upload documents, chat with them using AI, and generate study materials, reports, and presentations — all while supporting any LLM and keeping your data private.

"NotebookLM is powerful but locked to Gemini. NoteWorks gives you the same experience with your choice of models."

🆚 Why NoteWorks over NotebookLM?

Feature	Google NotebookLM	NoteWorks (Open Source)
Models	Gemini only	✅ OpenAI, Claude, Qwen, Gemini, local models
Self-hosting	❌ Cloud only	✅ Full Docker deployment
Data privacy	Google servers	✅ Your own infrastructure
Chinese support	Limited	✅ Deeply optimized for Chinese
Document formats	PDF, TXT	✅ PDF, DOCX, PPTX, CSV, MD, images, audio, video
Deep Search	✅	✅ Compatible with Deep Searcher
Studio outputs	Limited	✅ Mind maps, slides, infographics, reports
Multi-user	❌	✅ JWT auth + OAuth (Google, Weibo, QQ, Alipay)
Cost	Free	✅ Free & open source (MIT)
Payments	N/A	✅ Alipay & WeChat Pay integration

🎯 Quick Preview

↑ Upload documents, chat with AI, generate artifacts — all in one workspace

🚀 Quick Start

Option 1: Try Online (No Setup)

Visit http://www.notebooklm.studio for a live demo.

Option 2: One-Click Docker Deploy (Recommended)

# Clone the repo
git clone https://github.com/www6v/notebookLM.git
cd notebookLM

# Configure
cp config.yaml.example config.yaml
cp .env.example .env
# Edit .env with your API keys (QWEN_API_KEY, OPENAI_API_KEY, etc.)

# Start everything
make up-middleware   # Redis, Milvus, MinIO
make up-ha           # Backend + Frontend + Celery + Nginx

Access at: http://localhost

Service	URL
App	http://localhost
API Docs	http://localhost:8000/docs
Health Check	http://localhost:8000/api/health/live

Option 3: Local Development

git clone https://github.com/www6v/notebookLM.git && cd notebookLM
make install          # Install dependencies (uv + npm)
make up-middleware    # Start Redis, Milvus, etc.
make dev              # Backend
make dev-celery       # Celery worker
make dev-frontend     # Vue dev server

See Local Development for full setup instructions.

🔥 Key Features

📚 Notebook-Centric Workspace

Organize research around notebooks — collect sources, chat with AI, take notes, and generate artifacts in one place.

📄 Multi-Format Document Ingestion

Upload or link sources in any format:

Type	Formats	Processing
Documents	PDF, DOCX, DOC, TXT, MD, CSV, PPTX	Text extraction + optional MinerU for high-quality PDF→Markdown
Images	PNG, JPG, WebP, etc.	Vision model summarization
Audio	MP3, WAV, M4A, etc.	Qwen ASR transcription (with long-audio fallback)
Video	MP4, YouTube, Bilibili URLs	Qwen VL video summarization
URLs	Any web page	Crawling + content extraction

🤖 Multi-Model Support

Powered by LiteLLM router — connect any LLM:

• OpenAI: GPT-4, GPT-4o, o1, o3
• Anthropic: Claude 3.5/4, Sonnet, Opus
• Alibaba: Qwen-Max, Qwen-Plus, Qwen-Turbo
• Google: Gemini Pro, Gemini Flash
• Local: Any OpenAI-compatible endpoint (Ollama, vLLM, etc.)

🔍 Grounded Chat with Citations

AI answers are grounded in your documents with source citations — no hallucination, just facts from your knowledge base. Powered by Deep Searcher.

🎨 Studio — Generate Artifacts

Transform your research into polished outputs:

• 🧠 Mind Maps — Visual knowledge structures
• 📊 Slide Decks — Auto-generated presentations
• 📰 Infographics — Data visualization
• 📝 Reports — Structured research summaries
• 🔬 Deep Research — Multi-step research briefs (via DeerFlow)

🔒 Private & Secure

• Self-hosted — your data never leaves your infrastructure
• JWT authentication + OAuth login (Google, Weibo, QQ, Alipay)
• Object storage with Alibaba Cloud OSS

🏗️ Architecture

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                      Frontend (Vue 3)                       │
│   ┌──────────┐  ┌──────────┐  ┌──────────┐  ┌───────────┐  │
│   │ Notebook │  │  Source  │  │   Chat   │  │   Studio  │  │
│   │  Workspace│  │ Ingestion│  │  w/ Cit. │  │ Generator │  │
│   └────┬─────┘  └────┬─────┘  └────┬─────┘  └─────┬─────┘  │
└────────┼──────────────┼─────────────┼──────────────┼─────────┘
         │              │             │              │
         ▼              ▼             ▼              ▼
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                   Backend (FastAPI)                          │
│  ┌────────────┐  ┌───────────┐  ┌────────────────────────┐ │
│  │  Notebook  │  │  Source   │  │   AI (LiteLLM Router)  │ │
│  │  Manager   │  │  Parser   │  │   Qwen / OpenAI / etc  │ │
│  └─────┬──────┘  └─────┬─────┘  └───────────┬────────────┘ │
│        │               │                     │              │
│        ▼               ▼                     ▼              │
│  ┌───────────┐  ┌──────────────┐  ┌──────────────────┐     │
│  │  MySQL    │  │  Deep Searcher│  │  Celery + Redis   │     │
│  │  (meta)   │  │  (RAG/Retrieval)│  │  (async tasks)   │     │
│  └───────────┘  └──────────────┘  └──────────────────┘     │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
         │                     │
         ▼                     ▼
┌─────────────────┐   ┌─────────────────┐
│  Alibaba OSS    │   │   Milvus /      │
│  (file storage) │   │   Vector DB     │
└─────────────────┘   └─────────────────┘

🛠️ Tech Stack

Layer	Technologies
Frontend	Vue 3, Vite, TypeScript, Vuetify, Pinia, Vue Router, Vue I18n, Axios
Backend	FastAPI, SQLAlchemy (async), Pydantic Settings, Alembic
Database	MySQL via aiomysql
Retrieval	Deep Searcher (HTTP); DashScope embeddings; Milvus (optional)
Queue	Celery + Redis + SSE streaming
AI	LiteLLM router, DashScope (Qwen), OpenAI, Gemini
Storage	Alibaba Cloud OSS
Infra	Docker, Docker Compose, Nginx

📁 Repository Structure

notebookLM/
├── config.yaml.example          # Config template (copy to config.yaml)
├── .env.example                 # Secrets template (copy to .env)
├── frontend/                    # Vue 3 + Vite application
├── src-tauri/                   # Optional Tauri desktop shell
├── backend/
│   ├── app/api/                 # FastAPI routes
│   ├── app/ai/                  # LLM, vision, ASR integrations
│   ├── app/models/              # SQLAlchemy models
│   ├── app/services/            # Business logic
│   ├── app/tasks/               # Celery tasks
│   ├── alembic/                 # DB migrations
│   └── docs/                    # Backend feature docs
├── deploy/                      # Docker Compose files
│   ├── core/                    # Core services
│   ├── middleware/              # Redis, Milvus, MinIO
│   └── ha/                      # High-availability app compose
├── nginx/                       # Reverse proxy configs
├── makefile                     # make install / dev / up-middleware / up-ha
└── README.md

⚙️ Configuration

Required Settings

Edit .env with your credentials:

# Essential
SECRET_KEY=your-secret-key
DATABASE_URL=mysql+aiomysql://user:pass@host:3306/dbname
REDIS_URL=redis://localhost:6379/0
CELERY_BROKER_URL=redis://localhost:6379/1

# AI Models (at least one)
QWEN_API_KEY=your-qwen-key
# OPENAI_API_KEY=your-openai-key
# GEMINI_API_KEY=your-gemini-key

# Required for chat & source indexing
DEEP_SEARCHER_BASE_URL=http://localhost:8001

# Object Storage
OSS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=your-oss-key
OSS_ACCESS_KEY_SECRET=your-oss-secret

Optional Integrations

Integration	Purpose	Config
MinerU	High-quality PDF→Markdown parsing	MINERU_BASE_URL, MINERU_API_KEY
Langfuse	LLM tracing & observability	LANGFUSE_*
DeerFlow	Deep Research agent	deer_flow_base_url in config.yaml
OAuth	Google, Weibo, QQ, Alipay login	GOOGLE_OAUTH_*, WEIBO_OAUTH_*, etc.
Payments	Alipay & WeChat Pay	ALIPAY_*, WeChat Pay fields
yt-dlp	Video/audio from URLs	YTDLP_COOKIES_FILE for Bilibili

📊 Product Limits

Role	Notebooks	Sources/notebook	Daily Chats
free	20	30	50
paid	200	50	200
admin	200	50	∞

🧑‍💻 Local Development

1. Start Middleware

docker compose -f deploy/middleware/docker-compose-middleware.yml up -d redis milvus

2. Install Dependencies

make install
# This runs `uv sync` in backend/ and `npm install` in frontend/

3. Run Services

# Terminal 1: Backend
make dev

# Terminal 2: Celery Worker
make dev-celery

# Terminal 3: Frontend
make dev-frontend

Or run manually:

cd backend && source .venv/bin/activate
uvicorn app.main:app --reload --host 0.0.0.0 --port 8000

cd backend && source .venv/bin/activate
celery -A app.tasks.celery_app:celery_app worker --loglevel=info

cd frontend && npm run dev

4. Desktop App (Optional)

npm run desktop:dev

💬 Community

Join us to get help, share ideas, and contribute:

• 💬 Discord: Join Server (replace with your link)
• 📱 WeChat Group: Scan QR code (add QR image here)
• 🐛 GitHub Issues: Report bugs or request features
• 💡 Discussions: Share your use cases

🤝 Contributing

We welcome contributions! Here's how to get started:

1. Fork the repository
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b feature/amazing-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -m 'Add amazing feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin feature/amazing-feature)
5. Open a Pull Request

Check out issues labeled good first issue for beginner-friendly tasks.

📜 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.

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