I can tell you the exact moment when a new browser called Deta Surf clicked for me.
I was getting a demo from Deta cofounder Max Eusterbrock, and he showed me how Surf can take screenshots of web pages and add them to a digital pinboard. But unlike a standard screenshot, this one contained a link to jump back to the web page it came from, and its content was searchable from Surf’s menu system.
Aha, I thought. Too often, I’ll open dozens of tabs on a certain topic, only to forget which page had the quote or chart I was looking for. Surf solves that problem by making it easier to revisit what you’ve researched. It’s as if a browser was built around the idea of bookmarking, instead of the other way around.
It’s still early days for Deta Surf, which is launching a public alpha today after months of being invite-only. The software has all kinds of rough edges and can feel like it’s trying to do too much, and there’s also no mobile app and no business model yet. I’d caution against getting too invested in it.
But as a tool for short-term research that involves wrangling a lot of web page content, it’s one of the most interest concepts I’ve seen.
Beyond basic bookmarks
On the surface, Deta Surf borrows some ideas from other power user browsers such as Vivaldi, Arc, and SigmaOS. It supports both vertical or horizontal tabs, and you can arrange tabs into separate workspaces, which Surf calls “Contexts.”
But Surf also lets you save web pages to a “My Stuff” menu, which is a powerful spin on the standard browser bookmarks folder. Every tab has a button for saving the page to My Stuff, but you can also use Surf’s screenshot tool ((nvoked with Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+1) to save snippets of web pages with your own annotations.
The My Stuff menu supports more than just web page content. You can also import images and PDF files from your computer, and there’s a built-in notepad for adding freeform thoughts.
Everything you save to My Stuff is searchable, and not just by title. Surf also indexes the full content of web pages along with the text of screenshots and PDF files, so you find specific words or phrases. The result is a feeling of finally being able to close inactive browser tabs, because Surf provides an easier way to reference them later.
My favorite organizational feature, though, is the “Desktop” view, where you can rearrange and resize any the items you’ve saved to My Stuff alongside any number of sticky text notes. It’s a neat way to visualize all the different things you’ve been researching on a single canvas.
Yes, of course there’s also AI
Like lots of other startups, Deta is finding ways to bring AI into its browser as well.
Some AI features are similar to those of other AI-powered browsers. There’s an “Ask this Tab” button that can summarize and answer questions about the current page (including YouTube videos). You can highlight text on web pages to translate, rephrase, or ask follow-up questions.
The more interesting use of AI involves interacting with what you’ve saved in My Stuff. By clicking the “Ask Context” button, you can ask Surf to summarize details from across your documents or ask for supplemental information.
These AI queries then feed back into Surf’s notepad feature, essentially helping to organize or build upon your research. It’s kind of like what Google is doing with NotebookLM, but built around what you’re already looking up in your browser.
Eusterbrock also showed me a more ambitious “Surflets” feature, which can turn data from web pages into interactive visuals. If you were comparing web browsers, for instance, you could open up a bunch of pages that explain various browser features, then ask Surf to create an interactive chart comparing them.
Expect things to break—a lot
While Deta Surf is brimming with smart ideas about what a desktop browser could do, I wouldn’t say it all comes together the way it should.
For one thing, it’s just a lot to take in. Between the My Stuff menu, the Desktop, and all your open browser tabs, you’ve essentially got three different organizational surfaces to work with, and they multiply each time you create a new “Context.” My gut feeling is that the Desktop and My Stuff features should be streamlined into a single menu system for organizing and managing your research.
Surf’s AI features can be cumbersome to use as well. Deta has stuck AI buttons into seemingly every corner of its interface, but they all flow back to a notepad that opens in a sidebar menu. I’ve continually run into issues clicking the correct button to generate an AI response, and the latest build seems to have hidden the option to switch between large language models.
The biggest issue, though, is that a lot of things just don’t work properly. In my time with Surf, I’ve dealt with disappearing bookmarks, information that appears in the wrong Context, and web searches that get truncated after typing them in the address bar.
Surf’s AI answers are even less reliable. For instance, I asked the browser to provide links to YouTube backing tracks for a list of sheet music in a Google Drive folder, and none of its generated links worked. I’ve also had responses that don’t accurately reflect what’s in my notes and appear to be hallucinated, and I’ve yet to successfully generate a single “Surflet” on my own.
Meanwhile, I can’t bring in my workflow from other browsers, because Surf doesn’t work with most browser extensions (password managers are the exception) and doesn’t support bookmarklets. The lack of a mobile app means I can’t send pages into Surf from my phone, either.
Deta is clearly moving fast and breaking things in search of what sticks, and that’s totally understandable for an alpha product, but it makes for rough sailing if you’re trying to use it as an everyday browser.
What to expect
Eusterbrock acknowledges that a lot of what comprises Surf today is subject to change. Eventually the company wants to charge for things like cross-platform sync and collaboration, but it plans to spend the rest of the year nailing down the core product.
Deta had already shifted gears a couple of times before developing Surf. The Berlin-based startup began as a free web app deployment platform for indie developers, then tried spinning that product into a wildly ambitious online operating system with its own set of interconnected apps, called Deta Space, which raised around $3 million, according to Pitchbook.
It was a neat idea, but its parallel universe of apps lacked immediate appeal to end users, so Deta pivoted to building a browser instead. The core idea is still that you should be able to search and contextualize across your entire online workflow, but the browser allows Deta to work with existing web apps and sites instead of trying to build its own. (Deta killed off Space and deleted users’ data last year.)
The resulting product is more immediately compelling than Deta’s previous efforts, but it comes with the same risk of getting shut down if things don’t work out, and there are few examples of startups turning wildly ambitious browser into thriving businesses. The most notable startup in the space, The Browser Company, gave up on developing its ambitious Arc browser for desktops and is now pivoting to something much simpler.
Still, I hope Deta Surf proves the exception to the rule. As a way to actually make sense of your browser tabs and the research you do around them, there’s nothing else like it.
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