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open-notebook/docs/3-USER-GUIDE/index.md
Luis Novo 61cd010aff
docs: rewrite user guide and core concepts around the current product (#1460) 
* docs: rewrite user guide and core concepts around the current product

Rewrites docs/2-CORE-CONCEPTS and docs/3-USER-GUIDE against the code at
v1.15.0: current UI labels from the en-US locale, insights as a
first-class concept ("Insights only" context, Summary in podcasts),
context levels scoped to notebook Chat, Ask's three stages and notebook
scope, the real Add Source wizard, statuses and failure messages, real
transformation and podcast presets and fields, and Default Model
Assignments. Removes invented features (tags, export/share, batch
transformations, page-number citations, podcast bitrate/progress/share,
one-notebook-per-source, permissions) and generic filler.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

* docs: address review (model needs per feature, privacy scope, insight embeddings, upload limit, data storage, retry, UI details)

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

* docs: address review (generated encryption key, when speech-to-text is needed)

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

* docs: point provider setup to the canonical flow, fix Add (N) and Auto-assign scope

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

---------

Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-10-04 23:16:37 -03:00

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User Guide - How to Use Open Notebook

Step-by-step instructions for each feature. If you want to understand how things work first (notebooks, sources, insights, context levels), read Core Concepts.

Before You Start

Open Notebook needs at least one AI provider and default models. Follow AI Providers → Connect a provider to add a provider in Manage → Models, add its models and set the Default Model Assignments. API Configuration covers the rest of the Models page.

What each feature needs:

Feature Models needed
Notebook chat, source chat Chat Model
Transformations (insights) Transformation Model, or the Chat Model if none is set
Ask Chat Model and Embedding Model
Vector search Embedding Model
Text search None
Uploaded audio and video files, YouTube videos without a transcript Speech-to-Text Model (YouTube videos with a transcript don't need one)
Podcasts The language and text-to-speech models chosen in the episode and speaker profiles

The Guides

Guide What it covers
Interface Overview The sidebar, the notebook page, the source view, keyboard shortcuts
API Configuration Connecting AI providers, syncing models, default model assignments
Adding Sources The Add Source wizard, file types, processing status, failures
Content Processing Engines How files and URLs are extracted (Docling, Firecrawl, Jina, Crawl4AI, OCR)
Transformations Generating insights from sources, built-in and custom transformations
Chat Effectively Notebook chat, context levels, sessions, model choice, source chat
Citations Reading and checking the references in AI answers
Working with Notes Writing notes and saving AI answers
Search and Ask Text and vector search, and Ask across your knowledge base
Creating Podcasts Generating episodes, episode and speaker profiles

Your First 15 Minutes

  1. Create a notebook. Sidebar New → Notebook (or Notebooks → New Notebook). Give it a name and a short description; the description is sent to the AI in notebook Chat.
  2. Add a source. In the notebook, Add Source → Add Source, then choose Add URL, Upload File or Enter Text. On the Process step, keep the pre-selected transformation and embedding, and click Done. Processing runs in the background; the card shows Queued, Processing, then Completed. See Adding Sources.
  3. Chat. In the Chat column, type a question and press Ctrl+Enter (⌘+Enter on Mac). Click a numbered reference in the answer to open what it cites.
  4. Keep the answer. Click the Save to note icon under the answer. It appears in the Notes column.
  5. Ask across everything. Open Ask and Search, stay on Ask (beta), type a question and click Ask. Save the answer with Save to Notebooks.

Which Feature for Which Task?

Task Use
Explore a few sources with follow-up questions Notebook Chat
Ask one question across everything Ask
Find a passage or term you remember Text search
Find content about an idea, whatever the wording Vector search
Get the same summary or extraction for each source Transformations
Listen to your research Podcasts

Getting Help