Productivity software company Notion is entering the agentic era. During a live-streamed product announcement on Wednesday, the company—best known for its collaborative note-taking app—unveiled a new developer platform that expands the capabilities of its custom AI agents, enables connections with external agents, and allows teams to build automated, multi-step workflows that can pull data from any database. By creating an orchestration layer—a system that coordinates AI work across multiple tools and data sources—Notion is positioning itself as more than just a note-taking app with AI features. Instead, it aims to become a central hub where people and agents can collaborate across various tools and databases.

In February, Notion first launched its Custom Agents—AI teammates designed to handle repetitive tasks like answering frequently asked questions, compiling status updates, and automating workflows. Since then, Notion customers have built over one million agents, the company reports. However, these agents had limitations: they couldn't connect with external data or use custom logic. External agents used by companies also lacked a way to connect with the Notion workspace. Teams had to work around these issues by using third-party automation platforms or writing their own scripts to run on their own infrastructure. "It's true that, historically, Notion hasn't been the most developer-focused platform," said Ivan Zhao, Notion co-founder and CEO, during the livestream. "But things are changing."

Now, Notion will allow teams to deploy their own custom code. With its new Workers—Notion's cloud-based environment for running custom code—customers can write their logic and deploy it to a secure sandbox (an isolated environment that prevents the code from interfering with other systems). This enables teams to do things like sync data into Notion, build custom tools, and trigger actions with webhooks—automated signals that kick off processes when something happens in another app—without relying on external infrastructure. You don't even have to write the code yourself; the company notes that your preferred AI coding agent can do it for you. The Workers will use the same credit system as Custom Agents, but Notion is making this free through August so developers can experiment.

Syncing external data sources is also part of the Notion Developer Platform. Powered by Workers, the database sync feature can pull data from any database with an API. This means you could access data from places like Salesforce, Zendesk, Postgres, and others within your own Notion databases—and keep that data current. Zhao noted that this allows Notion's users to now "use your Notion database as a sheer canvas to power both your workflows and your agents."

Workers can also build agent tools with custom logic, for those times when connecting with a third party via MCP—short for Model Context Protocol, an emerging standard that lets AI tools connect to external data and services—isn't enough. Another addition allows Notion's users to chat directly with external AI agents they use, assign them work, and track their progress, as if they were one of Notion's own custom agents. At launch, Notion says that Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, and Decagon are supported partner agents, with plans to add more. There's also an External Agent API for teams that want to connect their own internal agents with Notion, such as those built specifically for their company's needs.

Developers and agents interact with Notion's new Developer Platform via the Notion CLI, a command-line tool for developers, available on the company's Business and Enterprise Plans. The Developer Platform represents a strategic shift for Notion as it becomes more of a programmable platform rather than just an application, positioning it to compete with other workflow automation platforms. As businesses increasingly look to automate knowledge work and build internal AI systems, a platform that ties together agents, custom code, and live data in one place starts to look less like a productivity app and more like core infrastructure. This also follows the broader trend among AI companies, which have been moving beyond AI chatbots to offer agentic tools that can take actions across different software platforms. "Any data, any tool, any agent—that's the big picture for the Notion Developer Platform," Zhao said.