NotebookLM-Style Source-Grounded Research
Turn a fixed document set into cited research notes, answers, and syntheses with explicit contradictions and evidence gaps.
Before & after
Same prompt, same agent — the only difference is the skill.
With 40 research PDFs, organizing them for use is key. Here are some approaches: - Upload them to a tool that can process and search across documents - Create summaries of each so you can quickly recall what's in them - Extract key findings and organize them by theme - Use a retrieval system so you can query across all of them NotebookLM is one option — it's good at grounding answers in your source documents and providing citations. You could also use Claude's project knowledge feature to keep documents accessible across conversations. The main challenge with 40 PDFs is retrieval — finding the right information when you need it without re-reading everything. How are you currently organizing them?
Community skill that wires NotebookLM-style research and note workflows
into Claude Code, so 40 PDFs become a queryable source set instead of 40
things you re-open.
WORKFLOW IT SETS UP
1. Ingest — the PDFs become a structured source set, each one an
addressable source rather than a blob of text.
2. Grounded query — ask across all 40; answers cite the specific
source and location, so you can verify rather than trust.
3. Notes layer — findings you keep get written back as notes tied to
their sources, so a conclusion always traces to its evidence.
WHAT THIS CHANGES vs. DUMPING 40 PDFs IN A PROMPT
• Citations, not vibes. "Three papers support X" comes back as three
named sources you can open, not an unsourced claim.
• The context window stops being the limit. You query the set; you
don't paste it.
• Notes persist across sessions — a literature review you build over
a week instead of rebuilding every conversation.
A REALISTIC FIRST QUERY
"Which of these 40 disagree on [method], and what's each one's
reasoning?"
→ returns the conflicting sources, cited, with the specific passage
from each — the thing that takes an afternoon by hand.
SETUP NOTE
It's a community-built, open-source skill orchestrating NotebookLM-style
workflows — check its own README for exactly which NotebookLM surfaces
it connects to before you rely on it for a deadline.
Want the ingest step walked through for your 40 files?About this skill
“Which document actually says that?” A polished summary is hard to trust when its citations point to whole files or hide disagreements. This skill brings NotebookLM-style research into Claude: answers and reusable notes grounded in a defined source set, with evidence you can trace.
What it does
- Inventories supplied documents and identifies missing, unreadable, or partially reviewed material.
- Builds a passage-level evidence ledger with stable source IDs and usable citation locations.
- Answers research questions while separating direct evidence, calculations, and interpretation.
- Distinguishes genuine contradictions from differences in dates, populations, definitions, and denominators.
- Produces reusable research notes that retain their evidence links across follow-up questions.
- States when the documents cannot establish a cause, recommendation, or current status.
What you get
A cited answer, source comparison, or research brief sized to your question, plus the unresolved gaps that affect its conclusion. It works with supplied documents or accessible exports; it does not install a NotebookLM connection or grant access to private notebooks.
Best for
Researchers, students, analysts, and developers who need defensible answers from a bounded collection of reports, papers, transcripts, or project documents.
SKILL.md preview
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name: notebooklm-style-source-grounded-research
description: Produce NotebookLM-style answers and reusable research notes from a fixed document set using passage-level evidence, citation checks, and explicit conflict resolution. Use when the user says "summarize these documents with citations", "what do my sources actually support?", "compare these reports", "make research notes from this notebook", "my summaries keep inventing facts", "these documents contradict each other", or "answer using only these sources".
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# NotebookLM-Style Source-Grounded Research
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