Notebooklm Brief Verifier

notebooklm-brief-verifier

NotebookLM is great at producing readable briefs, but it can:

• Skip a source that was in the bundle (silently — no error).
• Make claims the source bundle doesn't actually support.
• Contradict claims across sources without flagging the conflict.
• Generalize beyond the data ("studies show...") when one paper says something narrow.

This skill verifies a downloaded brief against the actual source bundle that research-hub uploaded, so the user can trust (or distrust) the brief before sharing or citing.

When to use

Trigger phrases:

• "Check this NotebookLM brief against the source bundle."
• "Verify whether NotebookLM missed or hallucinated anything important."
• "Compare downloaded NotebookLM notes to the cluster papers."
• "Audit this brief before I send it to my advisor."

Not for:

• Generating the brief in the first place — that's research-hub notebooklm generate.
• Comparing papers to each other — literature-triage-matrix.
• Manuscript-level claim audit — academic-writing-skills.

Inputs

In priority order:

1. research-hub-managed mode (default). When the brief was generated via research-hub notebooklm generate + download:

   • Brief: .research_hub/artifacts/<cluster>/brief-*.txt
   • Bundle manifest: .research_hub/bundles/<cluster>/manifest.json — list of which source files were uploaded.
   • Cluster Obsidian notes under raw/<cluster>/*.md — for spot-checking specific claims.
   • Source PDFs under pdfs/<cluster>/ — last-resort spot-check only; cap at 3 per session.

2. Manual fallback mode (new in v0.68.x). When the user generated the brief themselves on notebooklm.google.com — direct upload, web UI, copy-paste — research-hub never saw the bundle. Accept either CLI flags or a paste-into-chat:

   • --brief <path-to-brief.{md,txt,pdf}> — the downloaded brief file (any path, not just .research_hub/artifacts/).
   • --sources <path-to-source-list.{yml,md,json}> — a plain list of the source titles + DOIs / URLs the user uploaded to NLM.

   Conversational variant: paste the brief and the source list directly into the chat. The skill should ask explicitly for the source list if missing — do NOT assume coverage without ground truth.

The verification logic (source coverage scan, claim attribution, contradiction scan, overgeneralization scan, spot-check, follow-up prompts) is identical in both modes. Only the input-loading layer differs.

If the user names a brief file directly, prefer that path over guessing.

Method

1. Bundle inventory: list every source the bundle uploaded (paper title, citation key, DOI). Call this set S_bundle.
2. Source coverage scan: for each S_bundle item, search the brief text for the citation key, DOI, or first-author name. Call any bundle item with zero hits a "missed source".
3. Claim attribution scan: for each declarative claim in the brief (sentences ending with a period, containing factual statements), identify which source the brief attributes it to. If a claim has no attribution, flag as "unsupported".
4. Cross-source contradiction scan: when two sources are both referenced near contradictory claims, flag.
5. Generalization scan: any sentence with phrases like "studies show", "all", "always", "consistently" without a specific source should be flagged as potential overgeneralization.
6. Spot-check: pick the 1-3 most surprising / load-bearing claims and read the underlying source paper's abstract + relevant section to confirm support.

Output

In-conversation report (no file written by default). The report has 7 sections: source coverage, unsupported claims, cross-source contradictions, potential overgeneralizations, spot-checked claims, recommended follow-up NotebookLM prompts, and verdict (reliable for / use with caution for / do not cite without spot-check).

Full template + worked example: references/report-template.md.

If the brief is well-attributed and bundle coverage is complete, the report is short — that's a feature, not a bug.

Token-saving behavior

• Read the brief once at the start; quote line numbers in the report rather than re-reading.
• Compare against the bundle manifest first; only open source files for spot-checks (cap 3 per run).
• Cache the report in .research_hub/artifacts/<cluster>/brief-verify-<ts>.md optionally if the user says "save this report".

What NOT to do

• Don't rewrite the brief — that's NLM's job.
• Don't write to .research/ or .paper/ — this is verification, not workspace setup.
• Don't OCR figures embedded in PDFs.
• Don't infer support for a claim from "general knowledge" — only from the actual source bundle.
• Don't tell the user to ignore NLM. Tell them which parts to trust and which to spot-check.

See also

• references/report-template.md — full 7-section verification report template