SurfSense

While tools like NotebookLM and Perplexity are impressive and highly effective for conducting research on any topic/query, SurfSense elevates this capability by integrating with your personal knowledge base. It is a highly customizable AI research agent, connected to external sources such as search engines (Tavily), Slack, Linear, Notion, YouTube, GitHub and more to come.

Video

Surfsense_v006.mp4

Key Features

1. Latest

💡 Idea:

Have your own highly customizable private NotebookLM and Perplexity integrated with external sources.

📁 Multiple File Format Uploading Support

Save content from your own personal files (Documents, images and supports 27 file extensions) to your own personal knowledge base .

🔍 Powerful Search

Quickly research or find anything in your saved content .

💬 Chat with your Saved Content

Interact in Natural Language and get cited answers.

📄 Cited Answers

Get Cited answers just like Perplexity.

🔔 Privacy & Local LLM Support

Works Flawlessly with Ollama local LLMs.

🏠 Self Hostable

Open source and easy to deploy locally.

📊 Advanced RAG Techniques

• Supports 150+ LLM's
• Supports 6000+ Embedding Models.
• Supports all major Rerankers (Pinecode, Cohere, Flashrank etc)
• Uses Hierarchical Indices (2 tiered RAG setup).
• Utilizes Hybrid Search (Semantic + Full Text Search combined with Reciprocal Rank Fusion).
• RAG as a Service API Backend.

ℹ️ External Sources

• Search Engines (Tavily)
• Slack
• Linear
• Notion
• Youtube Videos
• GitHub
• and more to come.....

🔖 Cross Browser Extension

• The SurfSense extension can be used to save any webpage you like.
• Its main usecase is to save any webpages protected beyond authentication.

2. Temporarily Deprecated

Podcasts

• The SurfSense Podcast feature is currently being reworked for better UI and stability. Expect it soon.

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!

How to get started?

Installation Options

SurfSense provides two installation methods:

1. Docker Installation (Recommended) - The easiest way to get SurfSense up and running with all dependencies containerized.

2. Manual Installation - For users who prefer more control over their setup or need to customize their deployment.

Both installation guides include detailed OS-specific instructions for Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Before installation, make sure to complete the prerequisite setup steps including:

• PGVector setup
• Google OAuth configuration
• Unstructured.io API key
• Other required API keys

Screenshots

Search Spaces

Manage Documents

Research Agent

Agent Chat

Browser Extension

Tech Stack

BackEnd

• FastAPI: Modern, fast web framework for building APIs with Python

• PostgreSQL with pgvector: Database with vector search capabilities for similarity searches

• SQLAlchemy: SQL toolkit and ORM (Object-Relational Mapping) for database interactions

• Alembic: A database migrations tool for SQLAlchemy.

• FastAPI Users: Authentication and user management with JWT and OAuth support

• LangGraph: Framework for developing AI-agents.

• LangChain: Framework for developing AI-powered applications.

• LLM Integration: Integration with LLM models through LiteLLM

• Rerankers: Advanced result ranking for improved search relevance

• Hybrid Search: Combines vector similarity and full-text search for optimal results using Reciprocal Rank Fusion (RRF)

• Vector Embeddings: Document and text embeddings for semantic search

• pgvector: PostgreSQL extension for efficient vector similarity operations

• Chonkie: Advanced document chunking and embedding library

• Uses AutoEmbeddings for flexible embedding model selection

• LateChunker for optimized document chunking based on embedding model's max sequence length

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FrontEnd

• Next.js 15.2.3: React framework featuring App Router, server components, automatic code-splitting, and optimized rendering.

• React 19.0.0: JavaScript library for building user interfaces.

• TypeScript: Static type-checking for JavaScript, enhancing code quality and developer experience.

• Vercel AI SDK Kit UI Stream Protocol: To create scalable chat UI.

• Tailwind CSS 4.x: Utility-first CSS framework for building custom UI designs.

• Shadcn: Headless components library.

• Lucide React: Icon set implemented as React components.

• Framer Motion: Animation library for React.

• Sonner: Toast notification library.

• Geist: Font family from Vercel.

• React Hook Form: Form state management and validation.

• Zod: TypeScript-first schema validation with static type inference.

• @hookform/resolvers: Resolvers for using validation libraries with React Hook Form.

• @tanstack/react-table: Headless UI for building powerful tables & datagrids.

Extension

Manifest v3 on Plasmo

Future Work

• Add More Connectors.
• Patch minor bugs.
• Implement Canvas.
• Complete Hybrid Search. [Done]
• Add support for file uploads QA. [Done]
• Shift to WebSockets for Streaming responses. [Deprecated in favor of AI SDK Stream Protocol]
• Based on feedback, I will work on making it compatible with local models. [Done]
• Cross Browser Extension [Done]
• Critical Notifications [Done | PAUSED]
• Saving Chats [Done]
• Basic keyword search page for saved sessions [Done]
• Multi & Single Document Chat [Done]

Contribute

Contributions are very welcome! A contribution can be as small as a ⭐ or even finding and creating issues. Fine-tuning the Backend is always desired.