What is Deta Surf?
Deta Surf is an open-source smart notebook designed to elevate the quality of thinking: it brings web pages, media files, and local documents directly into your thought process, reducing scrolling, typing, and copy-pasting to make information processing more natural and efficient. Its core philosophy is “less searching, more thinking,” achieved through deep integration of web search, video summarization, PDF parsing, multilingual understanding, and scientific chart analysis capabilities. This helps users quickly extract key insights from hours of YouTube videos, hundreds of pages of PDFs, foreign-language materials, and complex diagrams, generating citation notes with direct links to the original sources.
Deta Surf supports creating interactive charts and mini-applications (Surflets) without writing code, lets users sketch by hand within notes, manage multiple resources via vertical tabs, activates dark mode to protect eyesight, and allows direct drag-and-drop imports of PDFs, images, and documents. All data remains stored locally on the user’s device, ensuring privacy control, while the entire core source code is openly available for review and collaboration.
Key features
It supports direct web searches within notes, providing content summaries and in-depth analyses while preserving clickable links back to the original sources.
Users can import local PDFs, images, videos, and other files, which are automatically parsed and understood—including text, charts, and multilingual content—enabling questions and organization without leaving the note-taking environment.
Use cases and audience
Ideal for individual researchers, students, and content creators who prioritize privacy, deep thinking, and knowledge integration.
- Smart Note Organization: Seamlessly integrate web pages, YouTube videos, PDF documents, and more into your note stream, supporting multi-format file imports and interactive chart generation.
- Cross-Source Information Understanding: Summarize and deeply analyze hours of YouTube videos, hundreds of pages of PDFs, foreign-language content, and scientific charts.
- Personalized Knowledge Application: Create small, explainable applications with Surflets, supporting hand-drawn sketches, vertical tabs, and dark mode.
Web links, YouTube videos, PDF documents, local images and files, hand-drawn sketches, and user-generated queries.
Smart notes with source citations, content summaries and in-depth analyses, interactive charts and Surflet mini-applications, plus a vertically tabbed note interface.
Frequently asked questions
Is the data stored by Deta Surf private?
Yes, all data is stored on the user’s local device, supporting free import, export, and management.
Can it integrate with a custom large language model?
Yes, it supports integrating any LLM, including those with built-in API keys or running locally hosted large language models.
How to use
- 01
Download Deta Surf and install it on your local device.
- 02
Import local PDFs, images, or documents into your workspace.
- 03
Embed web links, YouTube videos, or files directly in your notes, and instantly request summaries and in-depth analyses.
- 04
Use Surflets to create interactive mini-applications, or enhance your note-taking with hand-drawn sketches.
Official website & sources
Sources
Updated on 2026-10-30
