Installation¶

Installation requires two steps: downloading and building the MCP server, then configuring Claude Desktop to use it.

Downloading the server¶

Open a terminal and navigate to the folder where you want to install the server. Run the following commands in sequence:

git clone https://github.com/paolodalprato/notebooklm-mcp-structured.git
cd notebooklm-mcp-structured
npm install
npm run build

The first command downloads the source code from the GitHub repository. The second enters the project folder. The third installs the required dependencies. The fourth compiles the TypeScript code into executable JavaScript.

Configuring Claude Desktop¶

You need to edit Claude Desktop's configuration file to register the new MCP server.

Configuration file location: | Operating system | Path | |---|---| | Windows | %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json | | macOS | ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json | | Linux | ~/.config/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json |

Open the file with a text editor and add (or modify) the mcpServers section. If the file is empty or doesn't exist, create it with this content:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "notebooklm": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": [
        "/full/path/notebooklm-mcp-structured/dist/index.js"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Replace /full/path/ with the actual path to the folder where you downloaded the server.

Example for Windows:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "notebooklm-mcp": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": [
        "D:\\MCP_SERVER\\notebooklm-mcp-structured\\dist\\index.js"
      ]
    }
  }
}

If the file already contains configurations for other MCP servers, add the "notebooklm-mcp" entry inside the existing mcpServers object, separating it with a comma from the previous entry.

Verifying the installation¶

After saving the configuration file, close and restart Claude Desktop. On startup, Claude automatically detects the new MCP server.

To verify that the installation was successful, type in the chat:

Verify that NotebookLM is configured correctly

Claude queries the MCP server with the get_health tool and confirms whether the connection is active. At this point the server is installed but not yet authenticated with Google. This step is described in the next chapter.