SurfSense: an open-source local NotebookLM with MCP agents and a prompt-caching lesson
FurtiveMirth · reddit · 2026-10-23
Maintainers of SurfSense (Apache-2.0), an open-source local NotebookLM-style desktop app, seek design feedback. It offers cited Q&A over documents plus an agent that writes Word/PDF/PPT/Excel files, running on llama.cpp, Docling, hybrid retrieval, and MCP-based tools with strict egress allowlisting.
Key lessons: llama.cpp's prompt cache breaks at the first changed token — moving per-segment podcast instructions after sources cut re-reads from 6,200 tokens to 230 per segment; and gating agent mode on technical limits (tool calling, 32K context) works better than benchmark allowlists.
More from coding & agent
- Devs on Reddit swap tactics for stopping prompt regressions in AI agents — SleepFlimsy6963 · 2026-10-23
- Claude Code + ComfyUI MCP workflow for client work: paid models or open weights? — newaccount47 · 2026-10-23
- Social scientist: CS treats agentic development as a magic black box — RexDouglass · 2026-10-23
- Someone vibe-coded a Tesla Roadster game — before GTA VI — Jasonio · 2026-10-23
- Codex 0.164.0 'account/read failed' TUI error — fix is restarting the app-server daemon — bytebot · 2026-10-23
- Same native UI, two stacks: Swift build is ~80MB Mac-only, Zig build is ~10MB cross-platform — jedisct1 · 2026-10-23