Notion AI Agents: My complete U-Turn

My Complete U-Turn on Notion AI

A while ago, I wrote an article about Notion and AI, and my summary was essentially this: “Notion AI promises a lot, but still falls short.” With the release of Notion 3.0 and its completely revamped Notion AI Agents capabilities, I felt I needed to revisit that assessment. If I’m going to criticise something publicly, I should also acknowledge when they’ve genuinely fixed the problems.

So here’s what’s different, and why I’ve done a complete 180 on Notion AI.

Why I’m Now Blown Away

I am now absolutely blown away by Notion AI Agents. The new agents-based functionality, along with the ability to create custom agents within Notion, is simply amazing.

For someone like me who has an enormous amount of information in Notion; five years worth of both business and personal data, having AI agents that can analyse that information deeply, question the data, look for trends, and find insights I can’t see because there’s just too much information, is genuinely transformative.

It’s a huge step forward. I’ve now started using Notion AI more than any of the other AI agents I’ve created elsewhere. That in itself must say something.

What Was Wrong Before

Let me go back and revisit some of the criticisms I made in that original article.

AI Couldn’t Actually Think for You

The core problem was that Notion AI couldn’t make decisions or understand context like deadlines and priorities. I wanted Notion AI to help manage my work, and it simply couldn’t do it.

Now, with the AI agents, they actually do the work for me. They will:

• Write documents for me
• Take information from call transcripts and add it into documents
• Prioritise my work based on my business goals
• Challenge me when I’m working at weekends (I told Notion I shouldn’t do this)
• Understand that I’m trying to work four hours per day and no more
• Grasp my personal goals and how my business operates

If I tell them to update all my tasks to reflect these priorities, Notion AI can actually do it. That’s an enormous step forward.

You don’t really need to build within Notion anymore; you just ask Notion to do it for you, and it does. It makes the occasional mistake, but it’s pretty accurate for the most part. And you can always click the undo button just in case.

It Was Playing Catch-Up

I previously pointed out that Notion AI had taken a long time to get where it was, and was still behind competitors.

Now I think Notion AI has leapfrogged over some of the other AI tools out there.

I gave an example in my original article: Notion AI couldn’t “review all tasks overdue by more than five days and generate a priority list.” Now it can do that with just about everything inside your Notion workspace.

I used to ask it to read my last month’s morning pages and identify trends. It would give up halfway through the 30 or so entries and come out with generic nonsense. Now I don’t bother summarising my morning pages myself, Notion AI does a better job than I can.

It’s leapfrogged over other models to deliver genuinely better functionality.

The Power of Custom AI Agents

The Notion AI agents you create are highly configurable. You can get them to do whatever you want, and they understand your specific context.

I now have five AI agents:

1. A business coach
2. A project manager
3. A YouTube script writer
4. A content creator
5. A proposal writer

How They Work Together

What’s interesting is how these agents collaborate. I spent two days doing proposals for clients during a really busy period. I asked my four existing agents whether we should create a fifth agent to help with proposals.

Initially, they all came back and said, “Well, you don’t really get that many proposals. We’re not entirely sure it’s going to be valuable.”

I thought, “Really? We’ve done six in a day. What happens if this is the new level of proposal demand?” Surely we should have someone to help.

With that added context, they reconsidered and suggested: “Yes, we need to create a fifth agent. This is their role, this is what they do, this is the template they use, this is where they get their information, these are the products. What do you think? Shall we create it?”

And that was that. The fifth AI agent was created.

It’s like having five members of staff on the team, except they’re AI agents rather than people.

You Don’t Need to Be Hyper-Specific Anymore

The Bio Example

You used to have to be incredibly specific with prompts to get decent results. Here’s what changed.

A client asked me to send a bio as part of a proposal. I have a bio, I have a CV, I have a long career, there’s a lot of information, some relevant, some not.

I made the vaguest of prompts, thinking I’d use it as a starting point and edit it heavily myself. I said something along the lines of: “Can you create me a bio, but add in some relevant pieces from my CV that talk about what I do in my business now? Just put in the things that are relevant, and give a little bit of history because I want to sell it to this client and I want this proposal to be accepted.”

My expectation level was low.

I was totally blown away. It knew precisely what I was asking for. It pulled out the relevant sections of my CV and the relevant pieces of my current work. It gave a couple of big client examples (which I deleted to maintain confidentiality), but it was 90-95% of the way there. Really good work.

Even with vague prompts, if you have structured information inside your Notion database, it will use it intelligently. And if you tell the agent to use specific templates and point it to where key information is kept, it does an even better job.

You no longer need to be hyper-specific. And if you ask at the end of a prompt, “If you have any questions, please let me know,” it will indeed ask clarifying questions before completing the work.

Final Thoughts

It’s simply amazing.

I’ve talked to clients, friends, and colleagues about the new functionality in Notion AI version 3.0. I had a call not an hour ago where I explained what it does now, and the first thing my friend said was, “When I see you, can you show me? I’m so impressed.”

That’s where I am now. I’ve done a complete U-turn on Notion AI Agents. I’m an avid user. I use it multiple times per day. I’m beginning to worry a little bit because I genuinely rely on it now to pull a lot of my business work together.

I’m now reliant on Notion AI’s agents. I don’t think you can say any more than that.

If you’d like me to help with your Notion workspace and setting up Notion AI agents for you, then please let me know and click the button below to book a free call to talk about it.