A guy named Luis built a free alternative to Google’s NotebookLM that you can run completely on your own computer. Its called Open Notebook and gave it away on GitHub. You can upload: > PDFs and Office documents > Videos and audio > Websites > Research papers > Notes and other files Then ask questions, search across everything, and get answers linked back to the original sources. But Luis did not stop at copying NotebookLM. Open Notebook lets you: - Choose from more than 18 AI providers - Use OpenAI, Claude, Gemini, or DeepSeek - Run private models through Ollama or LM Studio - Create podcasts with one to four speakers - Control the speakers, voices, scripts, and episode style - Connect it to other tools through API or MCP The software is fully MIT licensed and has already crossed 37,000 stars on GitHub. You only need Docker to install it. Bring your own API key, or use a local model without paying API fees. NotebookLM gives you Google’s models on Google’s servers. Open Notebook lets you choose the brain, control the data, and run the entire thing yourself.