How to Build an Enhanced RAG Retrieval and AI Assistant for Youdao Cloud Notes

1. Retrieve All Youdao Cloud Notes Content

I first considered using the Youdao API to download notes or to stream them in real time, but after researching two common approaches I chose the ready‑made open‑source tool because it is faster.

The tool is available at https://github.com/DeppWang/youdaonote-pull and a simplified guide is at https://depp.wang/2024/simple-youdaonote-pull/. Using this method I pulled about 2,628 files across 32 folders, totaling roughly 439 MB.

2. Choose a RAG Solution

2.1 Option 1 – Self‑Developed

The self‑development path consists of three steps:

Select a vector database (e.g., Elasticsearch or any other vector store you are comfortable with).

Traverse the local note files and batch‑write them into the vector store.

Combine the vector store with a large language model to implement RAG.

2.2 Option 2 – Use Existing Tool (Coco AI)

I also evaluated the open‑source project Coco AI , which provides a ready‑made pipeline for building a local document knowledge base with enhanced retrieval and intelligent Q&A.

3. Full Implementation of Downloading Youdao Cloud Notes

3.1 Add a Cookie‑Copy Extension to the Browser

3.2 Open a Youdao Cloud Note page and capture the required cookies

Record the following cookie values:

YNOTE_PERS : v2|wxoa||YXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXeFnLJuPMwu0

YNOTE_SESS : v2|kOz8pXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX0HwuR

YNOTE_LOGIN : 5XXXXXXXXXXX96

YNOTE_CSTK : XXXXXXXXXXfI

3.3 Add the cookies to the tool’s configuration file

3.4 Run the Youdao Cloud Notes downloader

3.5 Verify that the notes have been saved locally

4. Full‑Text Search and AI Assistant with Coco AI

Reference the “0‑code minimal implementation – Coco AI” guide for the complete workflow.

4.1 Add the downloaded files as a data source on the Coco server

Set the appropriate file extensions for the data source.

4.2 Start a local Ollama model

Ensure the desired model is already deployed locally.

4.3 Configure the AI assistant

All data sources must be selected to enable the AI features.

4.4 Restart the client to establish the connection

4.5 Verify full‑text search works

The screenshots show that the search functionality is operational.

4.6 Validate RAG‑enhanced Q&A

Using the locally downloaded notes as the knowledge base, the Coco AI assistant successfully performs retrieval‑augmented generation, delivering accurate answers.

5. Summary

When an idea emerges, it is essential to explore every practical avenue. The current implementation demonstrates a functional pipeline but leaves room for improvement, such as real‑time synchronization of Youdao notes and finer RAG answer tuning. Feel free to share your own use cases and questions.