Comparisons · Korvo vs NotebookLM
Notebooks in the cloud vs decisions on your machine.
NotebookLM is a strong hosted research notebook. Korvo is for teams and individuals who need the workspace and index local, model traffic under their own keys, and a preserved decision trail.
Data residency
NotebookLM
Sources and notebooks live in Google’s cloud product under Google’s terms.
Korvo
Files, local SQLite index, notes, plans, and decision history reside on your device. Korvo never hosts your workspace.
Model choice
NotebookLM
Generation is tied to Google’s hosted models in the NotebookLM product.
Korvo
BYOK to OpenAI, Anthropic, or Google — or run fully on-device with Ollama.
Workflow
NotebookLM
Strong notebook-style Q&A and audio over uploaded sources.
Korvo
Capture → plan → execute → verify → challenge → decide, with an audit trail you keep locally.
Planning
NotebookLM
Conversation-led exploration of sources.
Korvo
Explicit plan mode: goal, assumptions, gaps, and approved analysis steps before generation.
Challenge layer
NotebookLM
Single product model path unless you leave the notebook.
Korvo
Optional two-model critique (beta) keeps thesis, critique, revision, and open questions together.
Decision memory
NotebookLM
Notebook history is product-side; export and audit shape depend on the host product.
Korvo
Conclusion, sources, model details, caveats, and timestamp stay in local decision history; export PDF/Markdown on Pro.
Quality measurement
NotebookLM
No separate on-device retrieval evaluation layer exposed to the user as product infrastructure.
Korvo
Medha measures retrieval with deterministic on-device metrics (recall, MRR, nDCG) without sending corpus content out.
Honest boundary
Local-first means Korvo does not hold your workspace. It does not mean every token stays on-device: cloud BYOK prompts follow your provider’s terms. Full offline operation is available via Ollama.
Keep the corpus local.
Explorer is free · Pro early access $149/year