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I got early access to Notion's custom agents back at Make with Notion. At first, it felt like a nice upgrade—another AI feature to experiment with. A few months later, I can honestly say it's changed how I run my business.

I’m always weary of turning into a Notion hype machine. I’ve been vocal about issues like Android app quality, or better syncing between Notion, Mail and Calendar.

This one though, is honestly a gamechanger.

Custom agents represent a fundamental shift in what Notion can do for you. And if you're not following along, you'll miss out on a hugely powerful part of your workspace.

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Here's the workflow that made it real for me.

When a client signs a proposal, a lot of things need to happen.

I create an internal project page.
I spin up a client-facing dashboard.
I populate tasks and phases based on what we scoped.
I update trackers across different parts of the workspace.

None of these steps are hard, but together they take time—and they happen every single time.

I didn't realize how tedious this was until I wrote it out step-by-step and fed it to a custom agent.

Now, when a proposal status changes to "Signed," the agent handles everything.

Project page: created.
Dashboard: built.
Tasks: added.

I don't touch it. I just get a notification that the work is done.

That's when custom agents stopped being a feature and started being a teammate.

If you've used Notion AI—the sidebar assistant—you know it's helpful. You can ask it questions, generate drafts, summarize pages, pull insights from databases. It's genuinely useful.

But it requires you to show up. You have to open the chat, think through what you want, and prompt it. The human is still driving.

Custom agents flip this. They don't wait for you to ask. They watch for triggers—a page created, a property updated, a meeting completed—and they act. Automatically. In the background. While you're doing something else.

Notion's own documentation puts it simply:

"Notion Agent is on-demand, whereas Custom Agents are autonomous."

That's the shift. On-demand means you're still doing the thinking. Autonomous means the system handles standardized work without you lifting a finger.

Custom agents are becoming prominent across many different tools right now. But there's a pattern I keep seeing: works great for individuals, breaks down at the team or organization level.

The technical users figure it out. They connect APIs, set up automations, build impressive workflows. But scaling that across a company? Getting non-technical employees to use it consistently? That's where most agent implementations stall.

Notion's done something smart here. Custom agents get their own dedicated section in the workspace sidebar. They have built-in sharing and permissions—some agents might be executive-level only, others company-wide, others specific to a single team. You can absolutely achieve this with other tools, but the learning curve is steep and it's not accessible for employees who aren't tinkerers or particularly technical.

The big unlock is that Notion has removed almost all of the friction in creating agents. They feel less like automations and more like role players on your team. Marketing has their content agent. Operations has their reporting agent. Client services has their deliverable tracker.

And the only real action item for teams? Write out what tasks need to happen, in what order. That's it. The technical setup is handled. The permissions are built in. You just need to define the work.

Here's something that makes this even more accessible: if your team has been creating detailed SOPs or playbooks for key workflows, you're already halfway there. Those documents can be repurposed directly as instructions for custom agents.

For my proposal workflow, I used to reference my client onboarding checklist to manually go through each step. When I built the custom agent, that same checklist became the starting point for the agent's instructions. I refined it after running it a few times, but the heavy lifting was already done.

The transition from using Notion AI to building custom agents is surprisingly seamless. You're not learning a new system from scratch. You're taking the workflows you've already documented and giving them to an agent that can execute them autonomously.

If you're wondering where to start, here are three examples I think will become table stakes for teams running on Notion.

Trigger: a meeting is marked complete.
The agent scans the meeting notes, identifies action items, and adds them to your task database—with owners and due dates already filled in. No more copying and pasting from transcripts. No more tasks slipping through the cracks because someone forgot to log them.

Trigger: a project phase is marked complete.
The agent compiles the deliverables from that phase, drafts a client update summarizing what was completed, and posts it to the appropriate channel or page. Your clients stay informed, and you didn't write a single status update.

Trigger: a YouTube video is marked "Published."
The agent pulls from the transcript to draft social posts, newsletter snippets, and pull quotes. Instead of spending an hour turning a video into five pieces of content, you review what the agent created and make edits. The heavy lifting is done.

These aren't super complicated, pie-in-the-sky workflows. It’s agents with the effortless Notion vibe.

There's a broader wave happening here. Reid Hoffman recently predicted that 2026 will bring "10-100x more people experiencing what it's like to have computers doing productive work while they're getting coffee."

Custom agents are Notion's answer to that shift. They're not replacing you—they're handling the repetitive, predictable work so you can focus on the deep, creative work.

And the teams that figure this out first? They're going to operate at a completely different speed.

If you want to experiment with custom agents, here's my advice:

First, write out one manual process you do repeatedly. Step by step. Don't skip anything.

Second, identify the trigger. What kicks this process off? A form submission? A status change? A new page in a database?

Third, define the outcome. What should exist when the process is done? A new page? Updated properties? A message sent?

Fourth, build a simple agent around that workflow. Start small. Test it. Iterate.

And if you want your agents to work well, treat your workspace like an environment they'll live in. Standardized databases. Clear naming conventions. Instructions that are written down, not just in your head.

On February 26th, I'm hosting a live session called "Getting Started with Custom Agents" where we'll build one from scratch together. You'll see exactly how I set up triggers, write instructions, and test workflows in real time.

And if you want to go further—connecting to MCPs, setting up complex triggers, taking actions outside Notion like sending Slack messages or emails—I'm launching a Custom Agent Bootcamp. It's a self-paced mini course designed to help you fully leverage custom agents for your business.

More details coming soon. If you want early access, just reply to this email and I'll make sure you're first in line.

That’s all for this week. Thanks for being here! 🙏🏼

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Dave de Céspedes
Founder, Workcraft Labs
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