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Gemini Notebook · Foundations · formerly NotebookLM
Turn a folder of documents into a briefing pack a committee can read, on Gemini Notebook’s free plan.
What you’ll end up with
One finished research briefing pack, shared by link. Eight supplied documents in one notebook; three questions answered and kept as titled notes; a study guide made from Reports; a data table with one row per candidate site and the columns the brief names; a slide deck in the Presenter Slides form, downloaded as a PDF; an Audio Overview in The Brief form; and the notebook shared with Anyone with a link — every generated line checked against the source it cites.
10
hours in all — about 6½ guided, 3½ on your own
6
sessions. Each designed to be completed in one sitting
Free
No payment and no card required.
Finishing gives you a completion record showing the work you built, and all three levels earn the Alongrail Certificate in Gemini Notebook. See what you’ll build →
You don’t need prior experience with Gemini Notebook. There’s no payment and no card required.
From eight source documents to a finished briefing pack
0195 min
The way in, and the first sources
You are signed in to Gemini Notebook, you have made a notebook and given it the pack's title, the five PDF documents are in it as sources, you have read what the software wrote about them unasked, and the committee's first question has been asked and its answer kept as a note with its sources alongside it.
02105 min
Every source in, and the questions answered
All eight documents are in the notebook — the two saved web articles uploaded and the transcript pasted in as text — the committee's three questions have been asked and each answer is a note with the title the questions file gives, you have found where two sources disagree and recorded which figure is current, and you have written a note of your own about which sources to trust for what.
0385 min
The study guide
You have read what remains of the free plan's allowance and when it refreshes, generated the pack's first output — a study guide made from Reports in the Document form — opened it, and checked one of its lines against the source it should rest on.
0495 min
The data table
The pack has a table with one row per candidate site and the five columns the brief names, asked for in your own words so that every figure comes from the feasibility report and the grid letter and the newspaper's superseded cost is nowhere in it; you have opened the table and read its headings and its rows against the brief.
0595 min
The slide deck
The pack has a slide deck in the Presenter Slides form, short, generated from the sources and the notes, read through and checked on its recommendation, and downloaded as a PDF for a committee member who will never open Gemini Notebook.
06115 min
The audio briefing, and the share
The pack has an audio briefing in The Brief form with its length read, the notebook is shared so that anybody with the link can open it, the link is kept in a note in the notebook itself, and you have read the whole pack back against the brief as a checklist.
What you need before you start
A laptop or desktop
Sessions need a laptop or desktop. If you’re on your phone now, that’s fine. Enrol now and we’ll email you a link so you can pick up when you’re at a computer. Gemini Notebook runs in the browser, on Windows or a Mac.
Chrome or Edge
Alongrail runs in the browser too, in its own tab beside Gemini Notebook.
The course files
Everything you work with is in the download.
What’s free
The whole course: every session, both parts, the files, and your record. Alongrail charges nothing for it. No payment, and no card at any point.
The software
Free. Gemini Notebook's standard plan is signed up for free of charge with a Google account, and no session asks for a plan, a card or a trial. The free plan has limits that reset every few hours; the course plans one heavy generation a session and says what the limit message looks like.
The data you’ll work with
Every file is invented — the companies, the people and everything in them are made up for the course.
Before you start
The course covers Gemini Notebook, in your browser.
- A computer with a current browser, such as Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Safari, and an internet connection. Nothing is installed; Gemini Notebook is a page at notebook.google.com.
- A Google account. A personal one is fine. Gemini Notebook's standard plan is free of charge with it, and no session asks you for a plan, a card or a trial. If notebook.google.com asks you to pay for anything, stop and use the something's-wrong control; this course never pays.
- Older material calls this software NotebookLM. Google renamed it Gemini Notebook on 16 July 2026 and moved its help pages; this course uses the new name throughout, and a tutorial that says NotebookLM is describing the same thing.
- The course's data download, unzipped. The session gives you the link when it starts. It unzips to two folders: whitlock, holding the eight documents you will add to the notebook — whitlock-feasibility-report.pdf, whitlock-council-minutes.pdf, whitlock-resident-survey.pdf, whitlock-grid-connection-letter.pdf, whitlock-planning-guidance.pdf, whitlock-gazette-article.md, whitlock-energy-coop-faq.md and whitlock-public-meeting-transcript.txt — and the five files the course reads from, whitlock-sources.csv, whitlock-sites.csv, whitlock-questions.csv, whitlock-table-columns.csv and whitlock-pack.csv; and harrow, holding the same shape for the second subject. Each folder also holds a start file for every session after the first, which you only need if you rerun a session: it is a list of what the notebook should already hold when that session opens, and a rerun means going back to the session that makes anything missing. The CSV files are for you to read; they are never added to the notebook.
- The free plan has limits, and this is what they look like. Gemini Notebook counts what you generate against an allowance that resets every few hours, and when you reach it the page says so and names the time it resets. Google's pages give the allowance two ways and this course does not pretend to know which is right; what it does is plan every session so that you generate one big thing in it — a report, a table, a deck, an audio briefing — and never two. If the message appears, nothing is lost: wait until the time it names and carry on. The page at Settings › Usage shows what remains.
- What the free plan cannot do, so nothing in it surprises you: cinematic video overviews and watermark removal belong to paid plans; if you are in India a watermark may appear on a generated output; a notebook may hold fifty sources on the free plan, and this course adds eight; the Slide Deck and the Infographic are offered to users over eighteen; and what Google calls advanced sharing is for paid plans, which the course does not use — sharing by link is on the free plan, read there on 2 October 2026.
- One part of the course asks for a Google account that belongs to someone eighteen or over, and we would rather say so here than surprise you later. Google offers the Slide Deck — the output session five makes — only to accounts of people eighteen or over, so Studio may not show it on a younger account. If that is your account, nothing else in the course changes: session five says what to make instead of the deck, and the something's-wrong control is how you tell us, so that the session can be passed on your outline rather than on a deck the software would not offer you. No second account is needed, and we do not ask for one.
- Who can see what. The notebook is private to your Google account until the last session shares it, when you choose Anyone with a link and anybody holding the link can open it and read every note and output in it. Every document in the pack is invented for this course — every council, firm, person, figure and address — and every web address is on example.com. Nothing of your own goes into the notebook, in the guided run or the independent run.
- Alongrail is not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to Google. Gemini Notebook is named here as the software the course teaches, and nothing more.
Alongrail teaches the software and gives you a record of what you built, with a link to the work itself. What happens with it afterwards is yours. We don’t place people and we take no part in anyone’s recruitment process.
Enrol free and start now.
Sign in, confirm the one thing the course needs, and session 1 opens. No payment, and no card at any point.
If something goes wrong on the way, press “Something’s wrong” in the panel, or write to hello@alongrail.com — we reply within one working day.
Frequently asked questions
What you build
You can take a folder of documents and a question somebody has to decide, and turn it into a briefing pack in Gemini Notebook on its free plan — every document in one notebook, the answers kept as titled notes, a study guide, a table that lines the options up, a slide deck a reader can open without the software, a short audio briefing, and the whole pack shared by a link — checking every generated line against the source it cites.
One notebook, shared by link, on the subject the course supplies: eight supplied sources added, three questions answered and saved as titled notes, a study guide made from Reports, a data table with one row per candidate site and the columns the brief names, a slide deck in the Presenter Slides form downloaded as a PDF, an Audio Overview in The Brief form, and the notebook shared with Anyone with a link. Three hundred and eighty guided minutes on the first subject, then two hundred and ten independent minutes building the same pack from a brief on a second.
How a session works
- Open Gemini Notebook
- Share your screen
- One instruction
- You do it
- It confirms it
- Next
You open Gemini Notebook and share your screen. Alongrail reads what’s there and gives you one instruction. You do it. It confirms the step landed, then gives you the next one. If something doesn’t match what you see, one button gets you back on track.
Guided
In the Fields list, tick Region. The chart fills in.
One field on the axis, one measure as the value.
then
On your owna different company’s data
Same job, a different company's files. Alongrail stays quiet until you ask.
Guided, then on your own.
The second part of every session uses a different company’s data, with the same kind of mess in different places. Alongrail stays quiet until you ask. It’s the work your record points to.
About 10 hours in all·about 6½ guided·about 3½ on your own
What you earn — the record, the certificate and a sample
Completion record
- Name
- Your name
- Course
- Gemini Notebook Foundations — build a research briefing pack from eight sources and share it by link
- Completed
- The date you finish
- Project
- The briefing pack you built on your own →
- Skills demonstrated
- Signing in at notebook.google.com, making a notebook and giving it a title of your own · Adding sources two ways — uploading files, and pasting text as a source — and reading the source count · Asking a question of the sources, reading the citations in the answer, and opening the source a citation points at · Saving an answer as a note and giving a note a title, so a reader can find it · Finding where two sources disagree and recording which figure is the more recent · Reading the remaining allowance before generating, and knowing what the limit message means · Generating a study guide from Reports in the Document form · Asking for a Data Table in your own words — the rows, the columns, and the source each column should come from · Generating a Slide Deck in the Presenter Slides form and downloading it as a PDF · Generating an Audio Overview in The Brief form and reading its length · Sharing a notebook with Anyone with a link, copying the link, and knowing what a reader can and cannot do with it · Reading a briefing pack back as a checklist against the brief that asked for it
What was built
One notebook, shared by link, on the subject the course supplies: eight supplied sources added, three questions answered and saved as titled notes, a study guide made from Reports, a data table with one row per candidate site and the columns the brief names, a slide deck in the Presenter Slides form downloaded as a PDF, an Audio Overview in The Brief form, and the notebook shared with Anyone with a link. Three hundred and eighty guided minutes on the first subject, then two hundred and ten independent minutes building the same pack from a brief on a second.
The 6 sessions, and when each was completed on their own
Each session was completed twice: once with step-by-step guidance on one company’s data, then on a second company’s data from a brief, with guidance only when asked. Every check passed on both. Alongrail records the sessions, the checks and the dates; the dashboard itself is the learner’s own, hosted where they chose.
A completion record for Gemini Notebook Foundations, now. It names the course, the date you finished, the skills you demonstrated, and links the briefing pack you built on your own. It’s private until you publish it, and you can unpublish it at any time.
The record is a description of work you did, not a claim about you. Anyone who opens it can see the work for themselves.
The Alongrail Certificate in Gemini Notebook when all three levels are complete. Foundations is the first of three. Practitioner and Professional are in development, with no dates. See the track →
Your screen stays yours
It looks when you ask. Never otherwise. Images of your screen are not stored. What Alongrail sees →
Nothing you build is public until you publish it. Your record is private until you say so, and you can unpublish it at any time.
What’s Gemini Notebook?
Gemini Notebook is the software this course is built in. It runs in your browser.
You won’t learn it by watching hours of tutorials. You’ll learn it by building something real with it.
Who you’re building it for
Whitlock Vale is a parish of about eleven hundred households with a disused quarry, a meadow by the church, a farm and a council depot. Its parish council has been asked whether the village should build a community-owned solar farm, and if so where.
Over the winter the question produced a folder: a consultants' feasibility report on four candidate sites, the minutes of the meeting that discussed it, a resident survey, a letter from the electricity network about connection costs, the district's planning guidance, a newspaper article, a cooperative's FAQ page, and the transcript of the public session of the meeting.
The council's finance committee meets in three weeks and nobody on it has time to read the folder. The Clerk has asked for a briefing pack: the documents in one place, the questions answered with the source alongside each answer, the sites lined up in a table, a short deck, something to listen to in the car, and a link.
One of the sources quotes a cost that another has since corrected, one calls a site by a nickname, one is older than the rest, and one is not about Whitlock at all. The pack has to be right about all four.
A second folder, from Harrow Ferry Company, which has to replace its diesel ferry, has the same shape and a different trap, and it is the one you build on your own.
Your job is to build the briefing pack that answers it.
Do I need to know Gemini Notebook already?
No. The course assumes you’ve never opened it.
What if I get stuck?
Press the button in the panel and say what you see. Alongrail works out where you actually are and picks the instruction back up.
Why 10 hours, when other courses are 40?
Because the time is spent doing the work rather than watching it. About 6½ hours is guided; the rest is you building the same thing again on your own.
What does Alongrail see on my screen?
Only the window you choose to share, and only when you ask it to look. Images of your screen are not stored by Alongrail. What Alongrail sees →
Can I use a Mac?
Yes. Gemini Notebook runs in the browser.
What if I miss a week?
Nothing closes. The dates are there to help you keep moving, not to catch you out.
What’s the “on your own” part?
The second half of every session: the same work on a different company’s data, with Alongrail quiet unless you ask. Both parts are needed for your completion record.
Is it really free?
Yes. No payment, and no card at any point.
Who can see what I build?
Nobody, until you say so. Your record is private until you publish it, and you can unpublish it at any time. What you build stays in your own files or account; where a step publishes something to the software’s own site, the step says so and says who can see it.
Where this course sits
Gemini Notebook Foundations is Foundations in Gemini Notebook. The track has three levels; each one you complete earns its own record, and all of them together earn the Alongrail Certificate in Gemini Notebook. All the courses →