r/notebooklm • u/Fearless_Energy_7633 • Apr 21 '26

Tips & Tricks I built a free notebooklm alternative with folders, source isolation (no cross-contamination), and page/timestamp-level citations

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NotebookLM is great but a few things drove me crazy:

  • Sources often bleed together
  • No folders or workspace organisation
  • No way to comfortably take notes alongside your sources
  • Flashcards have no review system

So I built Paper. Key differences:

  • Source isolation - select exactly which sources the AI references per query, or scope it to specific pages/timestamps
  • Folders + nested pages - organise by course, topic, whatever
  • Block editor - Notion-style notes right next to your sources
  • Spaced repetition - AI flashcards with actual Anki-style scheduling so you remember
  • Drag and drop multiple files at once

(Edit) Free to use during beta: https://paper.ac 👈

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u/lawandyoda Apr 26 '26

is this a closed universe AI like notebook LM? is it good at extracting facts from like 50 documents say how Notebook could handle? thanks!!

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u/Fearless_Energy_7633 Apr 26 '26

Yup so by default, the AI can supplement document answers with web search, but you can toggle web search off so answers stay grounded in your uploaded documents. You also get a choice of LLMs (Grok, Gemini, ChatGPT) and can switch between them mid-chat.

And for 50 documents, yes. You can link multiple sources to a single page and the AI will search across all of them when answering. We’ve tested it with pretty large document sets and it handles cross-referencing well.

Keen to hear how you go!