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MODSetter / 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. Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/ejRNvftDp9

13,007 stars
1,162 forks
60 issues
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AI Architecture Analysis

This repository is indexed by RepoMind. By analyzing MODSetter/SurfSense in our AI interface, you can instantly generate complete architecture diagrams, visualize control flows, and perform automated security audits across the entire codebase.

Our Agentic Context Augmented Generation (Agentic CAG) engine loads full source files into context, avoiding the fragmentation of traditional RAG systems. Ask questions about the architecture, dependencies, or specific features to see it in action.

Click here to launch the interactive analysis workspace

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Repository Summary (README)

Preview

<a href="https://www.surfsense.com/"><img width="1584" height="396" alt="readme_banner" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/9361ef58-1753-4b6e-b275-5020d8847261" /></a>

<div align="center"> <a href="https://discord.gg/ejRNvftDp9"> <img src="https://img.shields.io/discord/1359368468260192417" alt="Discord"> </a> <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/SurfSense/"> <img src="https://img.shields.io/reddit/subreddit-subscribers/SurfSense?style=social" alt="Reddit"> </a> </div> <div align="center">

English | Español | Português | हिन्दी | 简体中文

</div> <div align="center"> <a href="https://trendshift.io/repositories/13606" target="_blank"><img src="https://trendshift.io/api/badge/repositories/13606" alt="MODSetter%2FSurfSense | Trendshift" style="width: 250px; height: 55px;" width="250" height="55"/></a> </div>

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.
<p align="center"><img src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/b4df25fe-db5a-43c2-9462-b75cf7f1b707" alt="Login" /></p>
  1. Connect your connectors and sync. Enable periodic syncing to keep connectors synced.
<p align="center"><img src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/59da61d7-da05-4576-b7c0-dbc09f5985e8" alt="Connectors" /></p>
  1. Till connectors data index, upload Documents.
<p align="center"><img src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/d1e8b2e2-9eac-41d8-bdc0-f0cdc405d128" alt="Upload Documents" /></p>

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

    • Basic search and citation
    <p align="center"><img src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/81e797a1-e01a-4003-8e60-0a0b3a9789df" alt="Search and Citation" /></p>
    • Document Mention QNA
    <p align="center"><img src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/be958295-0a8c-4707-998c-9fe1f1c007be" alt="Document Mention QNA" /></p>
    • Report Generations and Exports (PDF, DOCX for now)
    <p align="center"><img src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/9836b7d6-57c9-4951-b61c-68202c9b6ace" alt="Report Generation" /></p>
    • Podcast Generations
    <p align="center"><img src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/58c9b057-8848-4e81-aaba-d2c617985d8c" alt="Podcast Generation" /></p>
    • Image Generations
    <p align="center"><img src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/25f94cb3-18f8-4854-afd9-27b7bfd079cb" alt="Image Generation" /></p>
    • And more coming soon.

Self Hosted

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

Quick Start (Docker one-liner):

docker run -d -p 3000:3000 -p 8000:8000 -p 5133:5133 -v surfsense-data:/data --name surfsense --restart unless-stopped ghcr.io/modsetter/surfsense:latest

After starting, open http://localhost:3000 in your browser.

Update (Automatic updates with Watchtower):

docker run --rm -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock nickfedor/watchtower --run-once surfsense

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

How to Realtime Collaborate (Beta)

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

    <p align="center"><img src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/40ed7683-5aa6-48a0-a3df-00575528c392" alt="Invite Members" /></p>

  2. Teammate joins and that SearchSpace becomes shared.

    <p align="center"><img src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/ea4e1057-4d2b-4fd2-9ca0-cd19286a285e" alt="Invite Join Flow" /></p>

  3. Make chat shared.

    <p align="center"><img src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/17b93904-0888-4c3a-ac12-51a24a8ea26a" alt="Make Chat Shared" /></p>

  4. Your team can now chat in realtime.

    <p align="center"><img src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/83803ac2-fbce-4d93-aae3-85eb85a3053a" alt="Realtime Chat" /></p>

  5. Add comment to tag teammates.

    <p align="center"><img src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/3b04477d-8f42-4baa-be95-867c1eaeba87" alt="Realtime Comments" /></p>

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
<details> <summary><b>Full list of External Sources</b></summary> <a id="external-sources"></a>

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.

</details>

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:

<a href="https://github.com/MODSetter/SurfSense/graphs/contributors"> <img src="https://contrib.rocks/image?repo=MODSetter/SurfSense" /> </a>

Star History

<a href="https://www.star-history.com/#MODSetter/SurfSense&Date"> <picture> <source media="(prefers-color-scheme: dark)" srcset="https://api.star-history.com/svg?repos=MODSetter/SurfSense&type=Date&theme=dark" /> <source media="(prefers-color-scheme: light)" srcset="https://api.star-history.com/svg?repos=MODSetter/SurfSense&type=Date" /> <img alt="Star History Chart" src="https://api.star-history.com/svg?repos=MODSetter/SurfSense&type=Date" /> </picture> </a>
<p align="center"> <img src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/329c9bc2-6005-4aed-a629-700b5ae296b4" alt="Catalyst Project" width="200" /> </p>