NotebookLM

mosaic notebook create turns a search, or a folder of PDFs, into a Google NotebookLM notebook, and can queue NotebookLM's generated material (audio overview, briefing, quiz, slides, ...) in the same command.

Unofficial client

mosaic drives NotebookLM through notebooklm-py, an unofficial client. Google can change the service without notice and break it.

Setup

Install the extra, the browser it signs in with, and sign in once:

pipx install 'mosaic-search[notebooklm]'      # or [all]; with pip: pip install 'mosaic-search[notebooklm]'
~/.local/share/pipx/venvs/mosaic-search/bin/playwright install chromium
~/.local/share/pipx/venvs/mosaic-search/bin/notebooklm login

notebooklm login opens Chromium for the Google sign-in and saves the session; later mosaic notebook runs reuse it without a browser. Run it again when Google signs you out. (With pipx, pipx inject --include-apps mosaic-search "notebooklm-py[browser]" puts the notebooklm command on your PATH.)

Usage

From a search:

mosaic notebook create "Hall thrusters" --query "hall thruster anomalous transport" --oa-only --max 10
mosaic notebook create "Hall thrusters" --query "hall thruster" -y 2020-2025 --podcast --briefing

From PDFs you already have, for example your mosaic library:

mosaic notebook create "Hall thruster reading list" --from-dir ~/mosaic-papers --slide-deck

Give --query or --from-dir, not both. The search takes the filters of mosaic search (--year, --author, --journal, --field, --raw-query, --oa-only, --pdf-only, --max). The command ends with the notebook's link.

Generated material

Each flag queues one NotebookLM artifact after the import; combine as many as you want. NotebookLM generates them in the background: they appear in the notebook's Studio panel after a few minutes.

Flag	NotebookLM artifact
--podcast	Audio Overview
--video	Video Overview
--briefing	Briefing Doc
--study-guide	Study Guide
--quiz	Quiz
--flashcards	Flashcards
--infographic	Infographic
--slide-deck	Slide Deck
--data-table	Data Table
--mind-map	Mind Map

If no source could be added, mosaic queues nothing and lists the artifacts it skipped: NotebookLM cannot generate from an empty notebook.

How it works

With --query, mosaic searches the enabled sources, applies the filters, and tries to download each paper's PDF as mosaic get does, into the download directory (--download-dir overrides it). It then creates the notebook and adds each paper: the PDF file when the download succeeded, otherwise the paper's web page (its url); a paper with neither is left out. With --from-dir, it uploads the directory's *.pdf files in alphabetical order.

NotebookLM accepts at most 50 sources per notebook: mosaic adds the first 50 and ignores the rest. A source that NotebookLM refuses is skipped silently; the count shows in the notebook itself.

See also: mosaic notebook, AI recipes.