[oceansweep]

As someone who's built something like it in their free time as a hobby project ( https://github.com/rmusser01/tldw), could I ask what would make it a professional product vs something an intern came up with? Looking for insights I could possibly apply/learn from to implement in my own project.

One of my goals with my project I ended up taking on was to match/exceed NotebookLMs feature set, to ensure that an open source version would be available to people for free, with ownership of their data.

[BoorishBears]

I'm going to challenge you to put that first screenshot into ChatGPT/Claude and ask them why it looks like something an intern came up with vs a professional product.

I'm not saying that as a slight or an insult, but right now the screenshot looks like a Gradio space someone would use to prove out the underlying tech of a professional product, not a professional product (unless you literally mean professionals are your target users as opposed to consumers).

I think an LLM would be able to very quickly tell you what most product builders would tell you at this stage.

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Also one of the key enablers of NotebookLM is SoundStorm style parallel generation. Afaik no open source project has reached that milestone, have they?

[oceansweep]

I don't think you understand the context, the person I was replying to was making that comment about NotebookLM. I'm fully well aware of how my UI looks, the whole reason I'm using Gradio for right now is that it is a single person project that isn't a product for sale. Not quite an intern, but same amount of funding. The current UI is a placeholder, because the idea is to migrate to an API first design so users can have whatever kind of UI they'd like.

SoundStorm/Podcast creation is one of the big draws, but I would question as to whether its one of its most-used features, considering hallucinations and shallowness.

[BoorishBears]

I guess I really don't understand the context because even with this clarification it's not clear what you're asking past "what does it take to add polish to my nascent project", when the reality is by the nature of it's nascent state no one is going to be able to give you more than surface level advice (which the LLM can provide pretty effectively, and in a more tailored way than we random commenters can. Isn't that fact kind of the underlying of your own project?)

> SoundStorm/Podcast creation is one of the big draws, but I would question as to whether its one of its most-used features, considering hallucinations and shallowness.

You're questioning the one single feature that drove its entire success in distribution? Most people don't know any features except the podcast feature.

If your goal is to address the more underlying concept of getting across knowledge in a quicker more readily absorbed format using LLMs, there's already an insane amount of competition and noise.

The podcast thing was the only reason NotebookLM cut through that noise, so the question shouldn't be "is it one of the most used features" (due to the way conversion rates work it will be btw, it might not be the most used feature by people who stay but obviously the feature that's highest in the funnel drawing people in will be your most used feature) but imo the more relevant question is "is it one of the most important features", and the answer is yes.

[oceansweep]

You’re making assumptions about my original question. I wished to know their opinion on what made NotebookLM ‘look like an Intern’s project. If what they shared was something I agreed with and relevant than sure I would apply it to my project but I already have plans for improving my project to my own standards.

Thanks for sharing your perspective though, I will keep it in mind. I disagree regarding podcasts being a ‘big thing’ past the initial honeymoon phase. I do think that custom generated audio is also a big thing and the podcasting is the first exposure a lot of people have had with that level of quality, and since it’s free and everyone already has a Google account, it makes it much easier for it to viral.

[bloomingkales]

plans for improving my project to my own standards.

That’s roughly the implication of my original comment. Many developers, including you, have a higher standard. I’m not gonna use something that looks like an intern slapped a few REST calls together with MUI.

It’s 2025 dude, I can build that in an afternoon. They have to take the product a lot more seriously.

Google’s lack of taste on this front will be the success of another competing product (perhaps even yours).

[oceansweep]

Ahh, thank you. For what it’s worth, I agree.

[bloomingkales]

I could not have said this better myself.