Open Notebook

Open Notebook is an open-source, AI-powered note-taking and research platform that emphasizes user privacy. It functions as a cognitive partner for managing knowledge and learning while giving individuals full control over their data, workflows, and AI interactions.

The platform provides several concrete capabilities. A podcast generator converts notes into episodes with options to customize voices, speakers, and structure. AI tools summarize content, generate insights, and assist with note management. Privacy controls allow users to specify exactly what information the AI can access. Content integration accepts links, PDFs, TXT files, PPT presentations, YouTube videos, and additional formats.

It addresses users who maintain large backlogs of unread material, seek to develop independent perspectives rather than absorb existing viewpoints, and prefer to avoid sharing personal context with major technology companies. The intended audience includes researchers, students, professionals, learning enthusiasts, independent thinkers, and those who want a tailored AI learning partner that provokes clearer thought. The project invites participation through beta testing, code contributions, input from experts in human learning, cognition, AI, and neuroscience, and sharing of personal learning workflows.

Open Notebook is delivered as a self-hosted open-source project with a public GitHub repository and Discord community for discussion. It is released under the MIT License. The first release represents an initial step toward a broader vision of building customized cognitive partners that augment human knowledge, skills, and opinion formation according to each user's preferences.