Show HN: Deta Surf – An open source and local-first AI notebook
27 comments
·October 23, 2025chanon
Looks interesting! What is the business model?
mxek
Great question. We'd look at Obsidian as a reference.
We think there are a lot of value added services that can happen when you need servers, but they should be user aligned & optional (Mobile app, sync, publishing, backups, remote jobs, collab).
We want Surf's client to be independent & open, but offer some of these on top -- for people who want them!
tosh
Kudos on the launch. Love the local-ai approach.
Regarding open models: what is the go-to way for me to make Surf run with qwen3-vl? Ollama?
As far as I understand any endpoint that supports the completions API will work?
https://github.com/deta/surf/blob/main/docs/AI_MODELS.md
If I attach image context will it be provided to qwen3-vl? Or does this only work with the "main" models like OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini and so on?
aavshr
Thank you.
Yes, we support any endpoint that supports the completions API. And yes, Ollama might be the easiest to setup. The images should also work with qwen3-vl.
But if you run into any issues, please feel free to submit a bug report https://github.com/deta/surf/issues
Edit: fixed github issues link
santiagobasulto
Nice, congrats! Off-topic, you guys are based in Berlin? I just recently moved in. Any recommendation for meetups or groups pro AI/startups?
mxek
We are in Berlin. Welcome!
Don't know too many, unfortunately. AI Tinkerers organizes a few a year: https://berlin.aitinkerers.org/
digdugdirk
Interesting! I'm very intrigued by the possibility of new forms of computer interaction made by breaking down app silos and linking data across various mediums. Something that caught my eye recently is Atuin Desktop, which seems to be a jupyter notebook style thing that runs your code natively.
The benefits of this is that I can connect this data, but in a computable medium. Does your product have any similar ability to bring code workflows "inside" the Surf application?
mxek
Thanks for the link, super interesting!
We have a super early form of runnable code, called "Surflets". More info here: https://github.com/deta/surf/blob/main/docs/SURFLETS.md
Basically you can supply input context and a runnable file will generate & run in your document. Useful for creating interactive charts or small applets.
Our philosophy is that if you want to update it, you should be able use your local code editor, not be stuck in Surf!
(we have work to do to make this solid)
esafak
Looks like a personal Notion, or Obsidian.
I would call this a note-taking app rather than a notebook, which to many mean computational notebooks like Jupyter.
mxek
Thanks for the input.
We took inspiration from analog notebooks as a tool for thought, but wanted something for multi-media. We also see NotebookLM as the closest mainstream product to Surf.
Related -- some people who have seen Surf's Applets feature have also called Surf "Jupyter for normies".
More on Surflets: https://github.com/deta/surf/blob/main/docs/SURFLETS.md
ruguo
Running a local LLM sounds like a solid use case, just not sure if it actually performs as well as the description claims.
tnolet
Saw it on Twitter and was interested. But from the video and demos I immediately did not understand why Notebooks and Notes are two tabs? In my mind, a Note is IN a Notebook, not some separate adjacent item...
mxek
Yes agree, the Notebook / homepage UX still needs work.
We recently introduced a sidebar (after the video was made) which has them organized as you mention.
hbarka
Photos are not mentioned as subset of media. I wonder if there’s a use case applicable to picture metadata.
mxek
Yes great point. Photos are intended as a very important subset of media.
Not (yet) super usable, but for photos we have local OCR running, with Surf creating additional metadata (e.g. the link from where the photo was downloaded).
Can imagine some use cases -- off the top of my head, suggesting the right photos to embed in a note in response to a user query.
vee-kay
So it's basically Cortana for Windows in a brand new powerful AI LLM avatar? ;-)
null
ashhimself
Looks great, will give it a go. Unrelated, what did you use to make the promo videos on deta.surf? they look great!
brechtknecht
big thanks for the praise!
for all the screen recordings we use Screen Studio by Adam Pietrasiak. Really a all in one workhorse for everything screen recording related.
The main teaser video was made by our incredible video editor Célestin (https://www.celest.in/) who is working with After Effects, Premiere and Blender.
IOT_Apprentice
Is this an open source equivalent to google’s NotebookLM? I can tell. How does it stack up features wise?
mxek
We see NotebookLM as the closest thing!
Surf is built entirely on editable WYSIWYG documents, NotebookLM's main AI is built on chat. Surf is built to be a bit more open, NotebookLM was a bit locked down for our taste.
An example I'd highlight is taking notes against a PDF.
NotebookLM will convert the PDF to simple text, and the chat responses are read only. NotebookLM also has a lot of strict walls between chat, artifacts & sources. You have to "save" responses as (read only) notes, and move notes to sources.
With Surf you can generate notes that deep link to specific pages in the PDF, and Surf will open those pages in the original PDF. You can remove the fluff you don't want in your notes. The intention is to be a little more open -- all notes are sources from the get go, you don't have to save or migrate anything.
Hi HN!
We got frustrated with the fragmented experience of exploring & creating across our file manager, the web and document apps. Lots of manual searching, opening windows & tabs, scrolling, and ultimately copying & pasting into a document editor.
Surf is a desktop app meant for simultaneous research and thinking to minimize the grunt work. It’s made of two parts:
1) A multi-media library where you can save and organize files and webpages into collections called Notebooks.
2) A LLM-powered smart document which you can auto-generate using the context from any stored page, tab or entire notebook. This document contains deep links back to the source material — like a page of a PDF or timestamp in a YouTube video. Unlike Deep Research products (or NotebookLMs chat) the entire thing is editable. The user also stays in the loop.
With a technology like AI, context / data is proving to be king. We think it should stay under the user’s control, with minimal lock in: where you can own & export, and plug & play with different models. That’s why Surf is:
- Open Source on GitHub - Open (& Local Data): the data saved in Surf is stored on your local machine in open and accessible formats and mostly works offline. - Open Model Choice: you can choose which models you use with Surf, and can add custom & Local LLMs
Early users include students & researchers who are learning and doing thematic research using Surf.
Github repo: https://github.com/deta/surf/
Website: https://deta.surf/