AI Guides › Step-by-step guides
By Nigel Guy · 6 min read
Most people "learn" from a video by watching it, nodding, and remembering about a tenth of it by Friday. It feels productive because the explanation made sense while it played. Understanding someone else's explanation is not the same as being able to produce your own, and a video never asks you to produce anything.
The rule: let the video be the source, never the teacher. Make something ask you questions about it, and only count what you can answer without looking.
This guide uses two free Google tools. The first, Gemini Notebook (the product formerly called NotebookLM; Google announced the rename on 16 July 2026), holds the video transcript and answers questions grounded in it. The second, Google AI Studio, can build you a small tutor app that drills you on the topic.
Google's help page says the video must be public and have captions (uploaded or auto-generated). It will fail if:
If a source video is later deleted or made private, the imported source is removed within 30 days. Save your own notes before then.
Add two or three videos on the same topic if you can. Disagreements between them are where the interesting questions come from.
Use the notebook chat with this prompt. It stops the default behaviour of dumping a summary.
You are a patient tutor teaching me from the sources in this notebook only.
My goal: [WHAT_I_WANT_TO_BE_ABLE_TO_DO_AFTER]. My current level: [BEGINNER / SOME_EXPERIENCE].
Process:
1. List the 5-8 core ideas in the sources in a sensible learning order. Wait for me to confirm.
2. Teach one idea at a time in under 150 words, with one concrete example from the sources.
3. Then ask me ONE question that makes me explain or apply the idea. Do not reveal the answer.
4. Mark my answer: what was right, what was missing, and the exact part of the source that covers it.
5. Only move on when I have answered correctly, or ask me to say if I want to skip.
Rules: if the sources do not cover something, say so rather than filling the gap from general knowledge. If my goal or level is missing, ask before starting.
Before each reply, check that you asked exactly one question and cited the source.
Fill in: [WHAT_I_WANT_TO_BE_ABLE_TO_DO_AFTER] and [BEGINNER / SOME_EXPERIENCE].
You need edit access to the notebook to generate these. Flashcards can be downloaded as a CSV, though that can be restricted for some source types.
This is the extra step. The notebook already does the job; an app gives you a custom drill screen.
Build a simple web app that acts as a tutor on [TOPIC] for a [BEGINNER / INTERMEDIATE] learner.
Screens: (1) a text box where I paste notes or a transcript; (2) a drill screen that asks one question at a time, with a free-text answer box; (3) a feedback panel that says what I got right, what I missed, and a short correct explanation; (4) a summary showing which concepts I should revisit.
Behaviour: ask questions only about the pasted material; mix recall questions and "explain it in your own words" questions; get harder after two correct answers in a row; never show the answer before I submit mine.
Style: clean, one column, large text, works on a phone.
If anything above is unclear, ask me before building.
After building, tell me how to run a test with a sample paragraph.
Fill in: [TOPIC] and the level. Paste the video's transcript or your notebook notes into it when you use it.
For retention, return to the Missed it cards after a day, then after a week. The mechanism is retrieving the answer, not rereading.