SurfSense

What SurfSense is

An open-source research assistant positioned against NotebookLM. It indexes your own material and searches the live web through native connectors for platforms such as Reddit, YouTube, TikTok, Amazon, Walmart, Google Maps and general search.

The project has moved to a local desktop app: no account to create, running on your own machine, with API and MCP server access for programmatic use.

What you can do with it

• Research the live web from a local application
• Combine your own documents with web results in one query
• Run it air-gapped for sensitive material
• Connect AI agents through the API or MCP server
• Migrate existing cloud workspaces through the ZIP export

Who it is for

• Developers and researchers who self-host
• Teams that cannot send documents to a cloud service
• AI agent builders wanting a research backend
• Privacy-minded users replacing cloud notebook tools

What to watch out for

• The cloud-to-local migration ZIP does not carry original uploads or live citation links, so plan the move
• Local operation means you own the maintenance and updates
• Web connectors depend on third-party platforms, which change their terms and interfaces
• Self-hosting requires comfort with desktop apps and, for server use, with the API setup