youtube-to-notebooklm

Search YouTube, grab transcripts, push to NotebookLM, and generate podcasts, mind maps, quizzes — all from your terminal with natural language.

Overview • Getting started • Usage • Built with

You:   "Find me videos about cold pressed juice"
            ↓  yt-search
Agent: Lists 20 videos (title, channel, duration, views)
            ↓  You pick one
You:   "Upload #3 to NotebookLM and generate a podcast"
            ↓  anything-to-notebooklm
Agent: Downloads 34 MB podcast to your machine

Overview

Three AI Agent Skills that work together inside your terminal. You talk; the agent figures out which skill to call.

Skill	What it does	Powered by
yt-search	Search YouTube, get metadata, download subtitles	yt-dlp
anything-to-notebooklm	Upload any content to NotebookLM and generate outputs	notebooklm-py
whisper-transcribe	Transcribe audio/video, translate subtitles, deliver via email/cloud	faster-whisper

User ──natural language──▶ AI Agent
                              │
          ┌───────────────────┼───────────────────┐
          ▼                   ▼                   ▼
     yt-search      anything-to-notebooklm  whisper-transcribe
     (yt-dlp)         (notebooklm-py)       (faster-whisper)
          │                   │                   │
          ▼                   ▼                   ▼
   Search results      Podcasts, slides,    SRT/TXT transcripts
   Subtitles           mind maps, quizzes   Translated subtitles

Getting started

Prerequisites

• Python 3.10+
• Google account — NotebookLM is free
• AI Agent with Skills support — Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, or any agent that reads ~/.claude/skills/

Installation

macOS / Linux / Git Bash:

git clone https://github.com/azuma520/youtube-to-notebooklm.git
cd youtube-to-notebooklm
bash install.sh

Windows (PowerShell):

git clone https://github.com/azuma520/youtube-to-notebooklm.git
cd youtube-to-notebooklm
.\install.ps1

The installer does three things:

1. Installs pip packages (yt-dlp, notebooklm-py, markitdown)
2. Copies skills to your agent's skill directory (auto-detects Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf)
3. Opens a browser to log in to NotebookLM (one-time)

Important

After installation, restart your AI agent to load the new skills.

Manual installation

pip install yt-dlp notebooklm-py markitdown

cp -r skills/yt-search ~/.claude/skills/
cp -r skills/anything-to-notebooklm ~/.claude/skills/
cp -r skills/whisper-transcribe ~/.claude/skills/

notebooklm login

Usage

Talk to your agent in natural language. Skills trigger automatically.

Search YouTube

"search YouTube for videos about trade show booth setup"
"find me some tutorials on NFC juice processing"

Get transcripts

"get the transcript of this video https://youtu.be/..."
"download the English subtitles from this video"

Transcribe with Whisper

When YouTube has no subtitles or auto-captions are inaccurate:

"this video has no subtitles, transcribe it with Whisper"
"transcribe this and translate to Chinese, then send to my email"

Note

whisper-transcribe requires additional setup (GPU recommended). See the skill's setup guide for details.

Push to NotebookLM

"upload this video to NotebookLM and generate a podcast"
"turn this webpage into a mind map https://example.com/article"
"make slides from this PDF ~/Documents/research.pdf"

Supported outputs

Say	Get
generate podcast	Audio podcast (deep-dive, brief, critique, debate)
make slides	PDF slides or editable PPTX
mind map	JSON mind map
generate quiz	Markdown quiz
write report	Markdown report
flashcards	Markdown cards

NotebookLM also supports video, infographic, and data-table outputs.

Multi-source

A single notebook can hold up to 50 sources. Add everything first, then generate:

"Upload these and make a report:
 - https://example.com/article
 - https://youtube.com/watch?v=xyz
 - ~/Documents/research.pdf"

End-to-end workflow

You:   "Search YouTube for AI agent tutorials"
Agent: Lists 20 videos with metadata
You:   "Get the transcript of #3"
Agent: No subtitles available for this video
You:   "Transcribe it with Whisper"
Agent: Downloads audio, transcribes → SRT + TXT
You:   "Translate to Chinese and upload to NotebookLM as a podcast"
Agent: Translates subtitles, uploads, generates podcast → MP4 audio file

Built with

Tool	Role	Cost
yt-dlp	YouTube search, metadata, subtitles	Free
notebooklm-py	NotebookLM CLI bridge	Free
markitdown	Convert PDF/DOCX/PPTX to Markdown	Free
faster-whisper	High-accuracy speech-to-text	Free (local)

Tip

Windows users: prefix CLI commands with PYTHONUTF8=1 if you see garbled output with non-ASCII characters.

PYTHONUTF8=1 notebooklm create "my notebook"