[HN Gopher] Show HN: Deta Surf - An open source and local-first ...
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Show HN: Deta Surf - An open source and local-first AI notebook
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/
Author : mxek
Score : 113 points
Date : 2025-10-23 12:11 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| digdugdirk wrote:
| 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?
|
| Atuin: https://github.com/atuinsh/desktop
| mxek wrote:
| 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)
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Is this a pivot from Deta Space? Related code or totally
| different project?
| mxek wrote:
| Many ideas are inspired by Space, but totally different
| codebase.
| esafak wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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
| ashhimself wrote:
| Looks great, will give it a go. Unrelated, what did you use to
| make the promo videos on deta.surf? they look great!
| brechtknecht wrote:
| 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
| Celestin (https://www.celest.in/) who is working with After
| Effects, Premiere and Blender.
| tnolet wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| codebastard wrote:
| Looks to my like an effort to pivot from an AI embedded Browser
| after the ChatGPT Atlas release into a local system Browser.
|
| I still don't see the advantage I get for my local system? Nearly
| all of the actions on the demo page are doable with chatGpt in
| one or three interactions.
| mxek wrote:
| The big difference UX wise between chatbots and Surf is that
| Surf is built entirely on editable documents that you can mold
| / craft into an output (vs chat).
|
| We actually had a chatbot, but our explorations showed that
| notes were a more effective in many cases!
|
| An example of local data is that "Applets" made in Surf can be
| opened / updated from your local code editor, they're just HTML
| files.
| jrm4 wrote:
| Umm -- not being tied to ChatGPT? Like, that's huge. I
| personally do not consider consistently using _any_ AI tool
| unless it has a local option. I 've been air-quotes "paranoid"
| about things like this my whole life and it's served me QUITE
| well.
| codebastard wrote:
| You are welcome to replace ChatGPT in my question with any
| selfhostable AI Chat setup or CLI Tool.
| hbarka wrote:
| Photos are not mentioned as subset of media. I wonder if there's
| a use case applicable to picture metadata.
| mxek wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| So it's basically Cortana for Windows in a brand new powerful AI
| LLM avatar? ;-)
| IOT_Apprentice wrote:
| Is this an open source equivalent to google's NotebookLM? I can
| tell. How does it stack up features wise?
| mxek wrote:
| 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.
| tosh wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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
| ruguo wrote:
| Running a local LLM sounds like a solid use case, just not sure
| if it actually performs as well as the description claims.
| santiagobasulto wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| We are in Berlin. Welcome!
|
| Don't know too many, unfortunately. AI Tinkerers organizes a
| few a year: https://berlin.aitinkerers.org/
| chanon wrote:
| Looks interesting! What is the business model?
| mxek wrote:
| 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!
| smoser wrote:
| This is a neat app. Though when looking at the files in finder it
| looks like while some files are stored as '.md' files the sample
| md files only contain HTML.
| aavshr wrote:
| Ah that might be a bug sorry, the sample notes should also have
| the html extension. The notes themselves are currently stored
| as html (because of the metadata and the state in notes mainly,
| you can still export to markdown).
|
| We need to do some work before we can also just store them
| simply as markdown files.
| pietz wrote:
| It has been wild watching deta over the years.
|
| They didn't pivot, they completely reinvented themselves. Twice.
|
| I loved their first cloud offering, which they sadly abandoned.
|
| Then they launched Space, which was kinda cool, but mostly weird
| and raised the question "why?". Also cancelled.
|
| Surf looks mostly cool, although I also don't quite understand
| it. It seems like Notion with a different twist on AI. Not sure.
| Since I'm fairly happy with my Obsidian + Codex setup, I'll pass
| for now. The good news is, this one's open source!
|
| I'd love to know how they're financing all of this. They have
| been around for years and users never even had the option to drop
| money in their lap. Now they're trying open source. Wild ride.
|
| All the best!
|
| PS: I would have paid for deta cloud Pro ;)
| mxek wrote:
| Thanks for this.
|
| You forgot about the Deta Studio and the Horizon desktop app ;)
|
| But on your question -- we're backed by supportive investors,
| and try to be frugal (we've had our fair share of sardines &
| rice).
| abdelhai wrote:
| this tells me nothing; a good Portuguese can goes for upwards
| of $20
| chrisweekly wrote:
| hey Pietz, have you written up your obsidian + codex setup? I'm
| a die-hard obsidian user, didn't like codex 6mo ago but heard
| it's gotten much better, so I'm very interested if you're
| willing to share TIA!
| pietz wrote:
| Oh, it's nothing fancy I'm afraid.
|
| I have an AGENTS.md file in my vault that provides a bit of
| context that this is not about coding, but about serving as
| my Obsidian helper. I ask it to check the .obsidian folder to
| check my plugins, Tell it how I like to build my
| presentations and the workflow I follow when writing
| articles.
|
| Then I just launch codex in the terminal inside the vault,
| have it do stuff, while I watch the desktop app for change.
|
| Other coding agents like Claude Code should work also, but
| gpt-5-codex was specifically trained on using the terminal to
| do everything it and doesn't even have that big of a system
| prompt related to coding. Works well.
|
| Combine that with a speech-to-text app and codex blazes
| through to find stuff or do things for me.
| mhuffman wrote:
| In either case, I am just happy that Knuth's idea of Literate
| programming is becoming more and more of a common reality after
| so many years.
| lordN87929 wrote:
| Yes
| mentalgear wrote:
| This seems to be a good open alternative to Atlas and Comet. I
| like the split-screen and local model usage!
| mxek wrote:
| Thanks!
|
| One big distinction: we aren't trying to automate people's
| browsing / clicking, but augment people's thinking.
|
| This creates a different feature set / model: tabs feeding into
| a document vs a chat going off and automating activity in tabs.
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