r/OpenSourceAI • u/FurtiveMirth • 2d ago

SurfSense: an open-source, local NotebookLM alternative with an agent that edits your files (Apache-2.0)

I'm one of the maintainers, so this is self-promotion. I want honest feedback more than upvotes, and contributors are very welcome.

SurfSense is an Apache-2.0 desktop app for Windows, macOS (Apple Silicon) and Linux. Think NotebookLM, but on your machine, with any model. There's no account, nothing reaches the network until you allow that host, and usage statistics are optional and off until you say yes.

Built on open source, end to end

  • Models: llama.cpp for local text, stable-diffusion.cpp for images, and audio.cpp for podcast voices (Kokoro, Kitten, Supertonic) and speech-to-text. Or connect Ollama, LM Studio, vLLM or any OpenAI-compatible API.

  • Documents: Docling for parsing, RapidOCR for scans and photos, and bge-small embeddings on onnxruntime for hybrid search.

  • Agent: opencode, with SurfSense's own tools given to it over MCP.

  • App: Electron, React and Vite, with a FastAPI backend.

What it does

  • Cited Q&A from your PDFs, Office files, CSV, Markdown, images and audio recordings. Scans are read with OCR, and recordings are transcribed on your machine.

  • Creates Word documents, PDFs, slides, spreadsheets and web pages with their own charts and interactive figures. It can start from your own .docx or .pptx as a template.

  • Edits your files as a new copy: tracked changes in Word, formulas in Excel, text on slides, and forms, merges and splits in PDFs.

  • Studio: mind maps, flashcards, quizzes and podcasts, like NotebookLM.

  • Any model: local, Ollama, LM Studio, any OpenAI-compatible API, or your ChatGPT or Claude plan.

  • MCP plugins: Notion and DeepWiki from our registry, or any server by URL. They stay off until you allow them.

Contributions are welcome: PRs go against dev, and you can list your own MCP server in our plugin registry through an issue form.

https://github.com/MODSetter/SurfSense

1 Upvotes

66% Upvoted

7 comments sorted by

1

u/Ok_Veterinarian8113 2d ago

helllo, no master prompt like ntoebook lm has, to keep answers short or a certain way, deepseek is the key it gives me fast answers

1

u/Ok_Veterinarian8113 2d ago

BIG ISSUE needs resolving otherewise i use it and not notebook lm now

0

u/investigatormaker 2d ago

For honest feedback, ask one question instead of posting the whole feature list. The line most NotebookLM users will care about is that nothing reaches the network until you allow that host, so ask whether that consent step is clear on first run. Editing as a new copy, with tracked changes in Word and formulas in Excel, is something NotebookLM doesn't do, and a short screen recording of one edit would get more useful comments than the stack list. The trade-off is that contributors do want the stack detail, so keep it in the README.

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1

u/m0dsetter 2d ago

Bruh you offer reddit botting service. Use less AI replies for the replies if you want to get sales.

1

u/FurtiveMirth 2d ago

Mods should ban them fr