alterlab-open-notebook

alterlab-open-notebook is a skill for Claude Code from AlterLab-IEU/AlterLab-Academic-Skills. It costs 173 tokens per session (2,435 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A self-hosted research notebook that stores documents and other media, then uses AI to answer questions and create notes from them. Self-hosted means it runs on infrastructure you control rather than only on a vendor's service.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to organize PDFs, videos, audio, web pages, and Office files; ask questions about them; generate notes; or create multi-speaker podcasts.
Why use it?
It gives you a way to keep research materials and their analysis under your control while using different AI providers. Its REST API also supports access from programs and automated workflows.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: allowed-tools in frontmatter.

Part of the alterlab-document-tools plugin — 3 skills shipped together

Good fit Use it to organize PDFs, videos, audio, web pages, and Office files; ask questions about them; generate notes; or create multi-speaker podcasts.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/alterlab-ieu/alterlab-academic-skills/alterlab-open-notebook
Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Any agent
npx skills add AlterLab-IEU/AlterLab-Academic-Skills --skill alterlab-open-notebook
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/AlterLab-IEU/AlterLab-Academic-Skills

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install alterlab-document-tools, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 3 skills.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for alterlab-open-notebook

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/alterlab-ieu/alterlab-academic-skills/alterlab-open-notebook/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/alterlab-ieu/alterlab-academic-skills/alterlab-open-notebook)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/alterlab-ieu/alterlab-academic-skills/alterlab-open-notebook"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/alterlab-ieu/alterlab-academic-skills/alterlab-open-notebook/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for alterlab-open-notebook

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/alterlab-ieu/alterlab-academic-skills/alterlab-open-notebook"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/alterlab-ieu/alterlab-academic-skills/alterlab-open-notebook.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 173 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,435 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 1 finding. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe. Third-party audits
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector warn 7 Sept 2026
SkillSpector: 12 findings, up to medium

These are SkillSpector’s own severities. On a checked sample its high-severity flags on skills were ~96% false positives — a documented command, a public API, a “never do X” rule — so we show them as a caution to read, not a verdict. Why →

  • medium Data Exfiltration · line 42
    Data is being sent to an external URL. This could be legitimate telemetry or data exfiltration. Manual review is recommended.
    Fix: Verify the destination URL is trusted and necessary. Remove or replace with documented APIs. Ensure no secrets, tokens, or PII are transmitted.
  • medium Data Exfiltration · line 73
    Data is being sent to an external URL. This could be legitimate telemetry or data exfiltration. Manual review is recommended.
    Fix: Verify the destination URL is trusted and necessary. Remove or replace with documented APIs. Ensure no secrets, tokens, or PII are transmitted.
  • medium Data Exfiltration · line 87
    Data is being sent to an external URL. This could be legitimate telemetry or data exfiltration. Manual review is recommended.
    Fix: Verify the destination URL is trusted and necessary. Remove or replace with documented APIs. Ensure no secrets, tokens, or PII are transmitted.
  • medium Data Exfiltration · line 104
    Data is being sent to an external URL. This could be legitimate telemetry or data exfiltration. Manual review is recommended.
    Fix: Verify the destination URL is trusted and necessary. Remove or replace with documented APIs. Ensure no secrets, tokens, or PII are transmitted.
  • medium Data Exfiltration · line 138
    Data is being sent to an external URL. This could be legitimate telemetry or data exfiltration. Manual review is recommended.
    Fix: Verify the destination URL is trusted and necessary. Remove or replace with documented APIs. Ensure no secrets, tokens, or PII are transmitted.
  • medium Data Exfiltration · line 151
    Data is being sent to an external URL. This could be legitimate telemetry or data exfiltration. Manual review is recommended.
    Fix: Verify the destination URL is trusted and necessary. Remove or replace with documented APIs. Ensure no secrets, tokens, or PII are transmitted.
  • medium Data Exfiltration · line 157
    Data is being sent to an external URL. This could be legitimate telemetry or data exfiltration. Manual review is recommended.
    Fix: Verify the destination URL is trusted and necessary. Remove or replace with documented APIs. Ensure no secrets, tokens, or PII are transmitted.
  • medium Data Exfiltration · line 169
    Data is being sent to an external URL. This could be legitimate telemetry or data exfiltration. Manual review is recommended.
    Fix: Verify the destination URL is trusted and necessary. Remove or replace with documented APIs. Ensure no secrets, tokens, or PII are transmitted.
  • medium Data Exfiltration · line 176
    Data is being sent to an external URL. This could be legitimate telemetry or data exfiltration. Manual review is recommended.
    Fix: Verify the destination URL is trusted and necessary. Remove or replace with documented APIs. Ensure no secrets, tokens, or PII are transmitted.
  • medium Data Exfiltration · line 186
    Data is being sent to an external URL. This could be legitimate telemetry or data exfiltration. Manual review is recommended.
    Fix: Verify the destination URL is trusted and necessary. Remove or replace with documented APIs. Ensure no secrets, tokens, or PII are transmitted.
  • medium Data Exfiltration · line 206
    Data is being sent to an external URL. This could be legitimate telemetry or data exfiltration. Manual review is recommended.
    Fix: Verify the destination URL is trusted and necessary. Remove or replace with documented APIs. Ensure no secrets, tokens, or PII are transmitted.
  • medium Data Exfiltration · line 215
    Data is being sent to an external URL. This could be legitimate telemetry or data exfiltration. Manual review is recommended.
    Fix: Verify the destination URL is trusted and necessary. Remove or replace with documented APIs. Ensure no secrets, tokens, or PII are transmitted.
How audits are shown
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00173 $0.02435
Opus 5 $0.00086 $0.01218
Sonnet 5 $0.00035 $0.00487
Haiku 4.5 $0.00017 $0.00244

Measured 5d ago against content hash 8b86973fae31, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

alterlab-open-notebook scanned grade A with 1 finding against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 5d ago.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 4 executable files (scripts/chat_interaction.py, scripts/notebook_management.py, scripts/source_ingestion.py, …), listed below but not scanned — reading those needs a real analyzer, not pattern matching.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Makes network callslowCapability

Not a fault in itself. Listed so you know the mod talks to something, and to what.

curl -o docker-compose.yml https://raw.githubusercontent.com/lfnovo/open-notebook/main/docker-compose.yml
skills/document-tools/alterlab-open-notebook/SKILL.md · 291 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 291 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Open Notebook

Overview

Open Notebook is an open-source, self-hosted alternative to Google's NotebookLM that enables researchers to organize materials, generate AI-powered insights, create podcasts, and have context-aware conversations with their documents — all while maintaining complete data privacy.

Unlike Google's Notebook LM, which has no publicly available API outside of the Enterprise version, Open Notebook provides a comprehensive REST API, supports 16+ AI providers, and runs entirely on your own infrastructure.

Key advantages over NotebookLM:

  • Full REST API for programmatic access and automation
  • Choice of 16+ AI providers (not locked to Google models)
  • Multi-speaker podcast generation with 1-4 customizable speakers (vs. 2-speaker limit)
  • Complete data sovereignty through self-hosting
  • Open source and fully extensible (MIT license)

Repository: https://github.com/lfnovo/open-notebook

Quick Start

Prerequisites

  • Docker with Docker Compose v2 (OrbStack or Docker Desktop both work; docker compose must be available)
  • API key for at least one AI provider (or local Ollama / LM Studio for free local inference)

Installation

Deploy Open Notebook using Docker Compose:

# Download the docker-compose file
curl -o docker-compose.yml https://raw.githubusercontent.com/lfnovo/open-notebook/main/docker-compose.yml

# Set the required encryption key
export OPEN_NOTEBOOK_ENCRYPTION_KEY="your-secret-key-here"

# Launch the services (v2 syntax; OrbStack/Docker Desktop both expose this)
docker compose up -d

Access the application:

Configure AI Provider

After startup, configure at least one AI provider:

  1. Navigate to Settings > API Keys in the UI
  2. Add credentials for your preferred provider (OpenAI, Anthropic, etc.)
  3. Test the connection and discover available models
  4. Register models for use across the platform

Read the full file on GitHub · 291 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 5d ago First seen · 291 lines · 173 tokens per session scan A 8b86973fae31

Subscribe to this mod's changes

alterlab-open-notebook is a skill published in the GitHub repository AlterLab-IEU/AlterLab-Academic-Skills (66 stars, last pushed 5d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 173 tokens to every session and 2,435 once invoked, about $0.0009 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 1 finding (makes network calls). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-09-05.

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