All the familiar UI of NotebookLM but with fully customizable apps like video generators, podcast creators, and more. Remix existing apps or create your own.
Hey Product Hunt 👋 I’m Nazar, the creator of Open Notebook, and I’m excited to share it with you today!
📖 Open Notebook is a customizable AI tool for self-learning. You upload your sources (PDFs, research papers, URLs, etc.), then you can either chat with an AI about them or run “apps” that transform your sources. Apps can do anything - right now I’ve built two:
• 🎬 Turn a source into a short, fun video overview
• 📝 Summarize a source into digestible takeaways
I built Open Notebook to solve one of my own biggest problems - the pain of learning something new. Like many of you, I love learning new things - I’m a programmer by background, but I constantly dive into adjacent fields like electronics, space, and math.
The problem? Self-learning today feel like a slog (yes, even with ChatGPT): • 😴 Long, boring YouTube videos or courses • 🤖 ChatGPT conversations that quickly get tiring and repetitive • 📜 And the worst of them all - reading long PDFs and textbooks
When I saw NotebookLM, I was intrigued - it promised to make learning content more engaging. But I was disappointed by how rigid it was. The outputs weren’t bad, but they weren’t _mine_. There was no way to tweak, remix, or really control the process.
✨ 📖 So I built Open Notebook - an open, customizable alternative. Instead of locking you into defaults, it exposes the entire source of the AI workflows (LLM prompts, steps, formats) behind outputs like videos, podcasts, or summaries. You can see exactly how your content is generated, remix it however you like, and even share your workflows with others to reuse in their own notebooks.
If you're looking to improve your self-learning sessions using AI to make them just a bit more fun and efficient, give Open Notebook a try.
Reach out if you have any questions or just want to chat about AI in education in general!
About Open Notebook on Product Hunt
“Open source NotebookLM alternative”
Open Notebook launched on Product Hunt on September 26th, 2025 and earned 143 upvotes and 20 comments, placing #10 on the daily leaderboard. All the familiar UI of NotebookLM but with fully customizable apps like video generators, podcast creators, and more. Remix existing apps or create your own.
On the analytics side, Open Notebook competes within Education, Artificial Intelligence and Online Learning — topics that collectively have 548k followers on Product Hunt. The dashboard above tracks how Open Notebook performed against the three products that launched closest to it on the same day.
Who hunted Open Notebook?
Open Notebook was hunted by Nazar Ilamanov. A “hunter” on Product Hunt is the community member who submits a product to the platform — uploading the images, the link, and tagging the makers behind it. Hunters typically write the first comment explaining why a product is worth attention, and their followers are notified the moment they post. Around 79% of featured launches on Product Hunt are self-hunted by their makers, but a well-known hunter still acts as a signal of quality to the rest of the community. See the full all-time top hunters leaderboard to discover who is shaping the Product Hunt ecosystem.
For a complete overview of Open Notebook including community comment highlights and product details, visit the product overview.
Nazar Ilamanov
Hey Product Hunt 👋 I’m Nazar, the creator of Open Notebook, and I’m excited to share it with you today!
📖 Open Notebook is a customizable AI tool for self-learning. You upload your sources (PDFs, research papers, URLs, etc.), then you can either chat with an AI about them or run “apps” that transform your sources. Apps can do anything - right now I’ve built two:
• 🎬 Turn a source into a short, fun video overview
• 📝 Summarize a source into digestible takeaways
I built Open Notebook to solve one of my own biggest problems - the pain of learning something new. Like many of you, I love learning new things - I’m a programmer by background, but I constantly dive into adjacent fields like electronics, space, and math.
The problem? Self-learning today feel like a slog (yes, even with ChatGPT):
• 😴 Long, boring YouTube videos or courses
• 🤖 ChatGPT conversations that quickly get tiring and repetitive
• 📜 And the worst of them all - reading long PDFs and textbooks
When I saw NotebookLM, I was intrigued - it promised to make learning content more engaging. But I was disappointed by how rigid it was. The outputs weren’t bad, but they weren’t _mine_. There was no way to tweak, remix, or really control the process.
✨ 📖 So I built Open Notebook - an open, customizable alternative. Instead of locking you into defaults, it exposes the entire source of the AI workflows (LLM prompts, steps, formats) behind outputs like videos, podcasts, or summaries. You can see exactly how your content is generated, remix it however you like, and even share your workflows with others to reuse in their own notebooks.
If you're looking to improve your self-learning sessions using AI to make them just a bit more fun and efficient, give Open Notebook a try.
Reach out if you have any questions or just want to chat about AI in education in general!