Turn the notebook into a prompt generator

Setup & accuracyGoes in: Chat

Fill a notebook with prompt-engineering material first, then have it write prompts for any goal - and improve its own draft.

Shared by u/Last-Army-3594 on r/notebooklm — credit where it's due.

Using the knowledge in this notebook, create a high-quality prompt for this goal: [INSERT WHAT YOU WANT TO DO]. Make it clear, structured, and effective. Adjust how strict or creative it should be based on the task.

Then: Improve this prompt. Make it more effective, less generic, and better structured.

How to use it

1Open your notebook at notebooklm.google.com.
2Replace the [bracketed] parts with your specifics.
3Paste the prompt into the chat box and send it.

Square brackets mark the parts you replace with your own topic or question.

More setup & accuracy prompts

The complete chat-settings templateNotebookLM's custom instructions take up to 10,000 characters, and almost everyone leaves them empty. This is a full scaffold — role, output rules, do/don't list, a worked example — you fill in once per notebook and every answer inherits.
Grounding guardrails: supported, inferred, or absentThe accuracy block for high-stakes notebooks: every claim gets labelled as supported, inferred or absent from the sources, disagreements are shown instead of averaged, and "I don't know" becomes a first-class answer.
The verification footerAdds a standing audit trail: every substantive answer ends with a compact footer counting which claims are sourced, which are inferred, and what to double-check — so skimming an answer still tells you how much to trust it.
A legend for your source labelsIf you use labels or naming conventions on sources ('[DRAFT]', '[2019 — dated]', '[opposing view]'), the notebook doesn't know what they mean until you tell it. This template turns your naming scheme into instructions the model actually follows.