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MODSetter / SurfSense

Open source alternative to NotebookLM for teams. Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/ejRNvftDp9

13,123 stars
1,168 forks
63 issues
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Repository Summary (README)

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MODSetter%2FSurfSense | Trendshift

SurfSense

Connect any LLM to your internal knowledge sources and chat with it in real time alongside your team. OSS alternative to NotebookLM, Perplexity, and Glean.

SurfSense is a highly customizable AI research agent, connected to external sources such as Search Engines (SearxNG, Tavily, LinkUp), Google Drive, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Linear, Jira, ClickUp, Confluence, BookStack, Gmail, Notion, YouTube, GitHub, Discord, Airtable, Google Calendar, Luma, Circleback, Elasticsearch, Obsidian and more to come.

Video

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/cc0c84d3-1f2f-4f7a-b519-2ecce22310b1

Podcast Sample

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/a0a16566-6967-4374-ac51-9b3e07fbecd7

How to Use SurfSense

Cloud

  1. Go to surfsense.com and login.

Login

  1. Connect your connectors and sync. Enable periodic syncing to keep connectors synced.

Connectors

  1. Till connectors data index, upload Documents.

Upload Documents

  1. Once everything is indexed, Ask Away (Use Cases):

    • Basic search and citation

    Search and Citation

    • Document Mention QNA

    Document Mention QNA

    • Report Generations and Exports (PDF, DOCX for now)

    Report Generation

    • Podcast Generations

    Podcast Generation

    • Image Generations

    Image Generation

    • And more coming soon.

Self Hosted

Run SurfSense on your own infrastructure for full data control and privacy.

Prerequisites: Docker Desktop must be installed and running.

For Linux/MacOS users:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/MODSetter/SurfSense/main/docker/scripts/install.sh | bash

For Windows users:

irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/MODSetter/SurfSense/main/docker/scripts/install.ps1 | iex

The install script sets up Watchtower automatically for daily auto-updates. To skip it, add the --no-watchtower flag.

For Docker Compose, manual installation, and other deployment options, see the docs.

How to Realtime Collaborate (Beta)

  1. Go to Manage Members page and create an invite.

    Invite Members

  2. Teammate joins and that SearchSpace becomes shared.

    Invite Join Flow

  3. Make chat shared.

    Make Chat Shared

  4. Your team can now chat in realtime.

    Realtime Chat

  5. Add comment to tag teammates.

    Realtime Comments

Key Features

FeatureDescription
OSS AlternativeDrop in replacement for NotebookLM, Perplexity, and Glean with real time team collaboration
50+ File FormatsUpload documents, images, videos via LlamaCloud, Unstructured, or Docling (local)
Hybrid SearchSemantic + Full Text Search with Hierarchical Indices and Reciprocal Rank Fusion
Cited AnswersChat with your knowledge base and get Perplexity style cited responses
Deep Agent ArchitecturePowered by LangChain Deep Agents planning, subagents, and file system access
Universal LLM Support100+ LLMs, 6000+ embedding models, all major rerankers via OpenAI spec & LiteLLM
Privacy FirstFull local LLM support (vLLM, Ollama) your data stays yours
Team CollaborationRBAC with Owner / Admin / Editor / Viewer roles, real time chat & comment threads
Podcast Generation3 min podcast in under 20 seconds; multiple TTS providers (OpenAI, Azure, Kokoro)
Browser ExtensionCross browser extension to save any webpage, including auth protected pages
25+ ConnectorsSearch Engines, Google Drive, Slack, Teams, Jira, Notion, GitHub, Discord & more
Self HostableOpen source, Docker one liner or full Docker Compose for production
Full list of External Sources

Search Engines (Tavily, LinkUp) · SearxNG · Google Drive · Slack · Microsoft Teams · Linear · Jira · ClickUp · Confluence · BookStack · Notion · Gmail · YouTube Videos · GitHub · Discord · Airtable · Google Calendar · Luma · Circleback · Elasticsearch · Obsidian, and more to come.

FEATURE REQUESTS AND FUTURE

SurfSense is actively being developed. While it's not yet production-ready, you can help us speed up the process.

Join the SurfSense Discord and help shape the future of SurfSense!

Roadmap

Stay up to date with our development progress and upcoming features!
Check out our public roadmap and contribute your ideas or feedback:

Roadmap Discussion: SurfSense 2026 Roadmap

Kanban Board: SurfSense Project Board

Contribute

All contributions welcome, from stars and bug reports to backend improvements. See CONTRIBUTING.md to get started.

Thanks to all our Surfers:

Star History

Star History Chart

Catalyst Project