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PleasePrompto/notebooklm-mcp is archived: what to use instead

· 3 min read
Romain Peyrichou
Romain Peyrichou
Author of NotebookLM MCP

PleasePrompto/notebooklm-mcp is the server most guides still point at. Its author archived it, and the package on npm has not moved since. If you installed it on the strength of a 2026 tutorial, you are running something nobody is fixing.

This is not a dunk. It was good work, it taught the pattern everyone else copied, and the author said so plainly rather than letting it rot quietly.

Does an archived server stop working?​

Not immediately, and that is the trap. These tools drive interfaces Google does not document. They keep working until Google changes something, and then they stop — all at once, for everyone.

That happened in mid-2026, when the web app was rebuilt. Every project in this space broke the same week. The maintained ones shipped fixes; the others stayed broken.

So the question is not whether your install works today. It is who answers when it stops.

What are the alternatives?​

Several projects are active, in different shapes:

  • A Python CLI plus MCP server, with the broadest coverage of the internal interfaces and the most contributors. If you work in Python, start there.
  • A Node MCP server with a local REST API — ours. One install serves both an agent and a workflow tool over HTTP.
  • A separate CLI-first project with a very large tool surface, which is worth knowing costs an agent context on every turn.

Pick on language, on whether you need HTTP, and on how fast the project recovered last time Google moved.

What moves when you switch from the archived one?​

Less than you would expect. Most of its tool names were copied by everyone after it, so an agent's habits largely carry over. In our case 17 of its 19 tool names work unchanged.

Two were renamed, because the thing they did grew: generating an audio overview became generating content of several kinds, and downloading audio became downloading content.

The trap worth knowing about​

One environment variable has the same name and a different meaning in different projects. In the archived server, the transport variable chose between the stdio and HTTP ways of talking to the client. In ours, it chooses between the internal-API and browser ways of talking to NotebookLM.

Copy a configuration across without reading it and you will set something real, that does something else, silently. Check every variable you carry over rather than assuming a shared vocabulary.

When should you not migrate at all?​

  • If your install works and the work is finished. An archived tool that already produced what you needed owes you nothing.
  • If you only ever ask one notebook one kind of question. The web app is right there, and it is better at that than any of us.
  • If you have an enterprise licence. Google's own API is supported and nothing here competes with a contract.

Trying this one​

/plugin marketplace add roomi-fields/claude-plugins
/plugin install notebooklm@roomi-fields
npx -y -p @roomi-fields/notebooklm-mcp notebooklm-mcp-setup-auth

The tool-by-tool mapping, the environment variable table and the full feature comparison are on the migration page.