From Note-Taking App to AI Workspace: The Simon Last Interview
887 segments
Hi listeners, welcome back to No Priors.
Today I'm here with Simon Last,
co-founder at Notion. We talk about
their new vision for notion in the AI
age as a platform for humans and agents
to collaborate, how the engineering and
product org at notion is changing,
[music] and these new tools for thought.
Welcome, Simon. Hey, Simon. Thanks for
doing this.
>> Hey, of course. Yeah, it's really fun to
be here.
>> Notion's at scale. Amazing platform,
lots of users. You did start quite a
while ago. I think of notion as one of
the companies that has really like
braced AI quite aggressively. I was told
you first got your hands on GPT4 uh at a
company offsite in Mexico. Um is that
true? What is the origin story of like
starting to work on this stuff?
>> Yeah, I think yeah, that year that was
2022. Um I I've been watching you know
what's going on in general. I've just
been like super curious about the
technology and fascinated to to try
everything and think about like like how
we can apply it. It wasn't until I
played with GBG4 that it it became
really really real. So, you know, we
when we got access to it, it it was sort
of like a a protogt like interface. Um
and uh my co-founder Ivan and I both got
access and it was just immediately clear
like I would say two big things. One is
that it was just pretty smart. it it
could follow reasonably complicated
instructions. It could write things for
you. You could edit things and and the
second big thing was that uh the scope
of its knowledge was extremely
interesting. Uh super super deep like um
and and broad world knowledge. When we
played with it, it became just instantly
clear to both of us like okay the the
time is now to start thinking about how
to apply this. It's only going to get
better.
>> We were talking about Mexico TPT4. You
guys saw it was like clearly the time.
Did you start with like a particular
vision of like what you should obviously
be able to do with AI and notion or did
you start pulling people from different
teams or recruiting people and say like
let's experiment? How did you begin?
>> I think we immediately had a long-term
and a short-term vision. I would say the
the I'll start with the short-term one.
The the thing that was immediately
obvious was oh it could be like a
writing assistant.
>> Um so it could be in your document. You
could like select some text, have it
rewrite it. You could have it write text
for you. maybe look something up and
then uh you know give you like like
sources or more information. So that was
the thing that we immediately like like
got to work on and you know we sort of
started a tiger team around it and then
we were able to launch it in like like
two or three months after that. And then
the long-term vision that we immediately
had was like oh the thing that looks
like it may be possible is more of like
a general assistant. So what if you
could just give it all the tools inside
notion that a human would have be able
to like create its own databases, query,
manipulate them, create documents, edit
them, uh and sort of weave all these
things together to do like a longer
range task. And so we we sort of uh
immediately started on both. The the
short-term one we're able to shoot very
quickly and then the long-term one
didn't really work yet and so that took
much longer to get working. Are there
like specific
first launch of the AI specific notion
features and products was when last
year?
>> No, it was uh it was February 2023 is
when Okay. It launched. Yeah.
>> My timelines are wrong. Um are there
like a few um specific learnings or
breakthrough moments you think since
beginning to release that are
interesting?
>> Yeah, I mean there's been it's it's it's
been a slog over many years or over
multiple years at this point with with
many many learnings I would say. Yeah. I
mean just to give you a timeline of the
arc of what what we shipped is you know
so the first thing was our our writing
system uh we called it AI writer um
that's the first thing we launched uh it
was the easiest to get working is it's
like singlestep task rewriting editing
text uh there's no like retrieval aspect
it was just like raw access to the model
to write uh uh to write the text the
next
>> uh the next big thing that uh that we
immediately started working on was Q&A
doing a semantic index of the entire
workspace and then letting you ask a
question and and I can give you an
answer that's that's grounded in the
sources. That was also immediately
obvious to us that that'd be super
useful. And so we started work on that.
That one we launched in I think it was
October 2023.
So we started a beta before then, but
then that our our GA was in October.
That was just a much bigger effort to
get working. Obviously, we weren't just
like plugging in the LM. It was actually
doing this like real-time updating
index,
>> right?
>> We had to get much more serious about
the the evals and the quality there as
well. the the Q&A has been a a
multi-year journey. Basically, what what
we did is immed uh as soon as we got the
notion index working, it it was obvious
that okay, we should index everything
else as well and and so we index like
Slack and Google Drive and and we're
launching new ones uh on a on a regular
cadence and and and now we have a uh I
would say fairly complete
>> one could argue that those are like very
difficult problems that you know those
products natively have not solved
perfectly yet. So, how did you think
about taking that on? I don't know if
that's like an offensive thing to other
product teams, but like it's not working
yet.
>> Yeah, it's it's kind of true. Yeah, this
has been something we talk about a lot
because it's like, you know, it's like
almost like what right do we even have
to do this? But but it turns out that
most of the companies are pretty bad at
making their indexes somehow. It's
honestly kind of baffled us a little
bit,
>> right? But I I think my take after
dealing with all of this and you know
working with the team to try to get it
working is there's a little bit of just
AI pilled savviness that's pretty
important and then and then I think most
of it is honestly just like a bit of
like like craft and attention to detail.
I think like in in particular with this
like indexing retrieval stuff in order
to really get it working you you have to
be quite empirical and iterative and
actually be like like trying queries
like you know like each each uh data
source is a little bit special like you
know you can't just apply a
one-sizefits-all to like quering Slack
versus quering Google Drive let's say
they're they're completely different
kinds of information and we found that
there's just a little bit of like like
craft and love that has to go into it in
terms of like actually trying a bunch of
different queries actually using it
every day and constantly
iterating and rethinking and and and
tuning how the retrieval works.
>> How did you um think about the diversity
of how people organize their workspaces
and just I mean even notion is not use
of it is not homogeneous, right? Like
I'm probably part of 15 workspaces as an
investor and so I look at them and I'm
like well mine's a mess and these people
are really organized and the workflow is
reflected in how their notion works.
>> Yeah, totally. I would say I mean the
interesting thing is that with
embeddings it almost doesn't matter as
much. anymore. The the AI doesn't really
care what the what the the tree
structure is. For example, the all the
AI cares about is that there's a snippet
of text that has the the context you
need and then it can retrieve it. And
so, actually, we kind of advise people
now like don't worry as much about
organization. Just just just find a way
to get it all piped in and like like
thrown in there.
>> You still make decisions that could
change performance quite a bit like
chunking strategy or whatever.
>> Yeah,
>> that's super important. But but that's
sort of not that's sort of transparent
to the user and sort of in independent
of their their particular method of
organizing things.
>> Mhm. It just seems like still a
difficult technical challenge given how
different the content bases are.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think yeah that took
a lot of iteration. Yeah. The chunk
sizing, how retrieval works, the
different like steps in the pipeline of
retrieval. Um yeah, there's a lot of
iteration on that. Ivan said I should
ask you um how many times you've rebuilt
Notion and rebuilt your harnesses.
>> Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of a running joke
almost. I mean we we we rewrite our AI
harness probably every six months or so
and it and the time to rewrite has kind
of been been decreasing just because I
think like like progress has been
accelerating. I think this is honestly a
a really key thing and something that a
lot of companies get wrong is just like
doing one thing and then just like like
sticking with it. you really do have to
keenly aware of what the current state
of the models and the technology is and
then designing the harness the system
and the product deeply around that and
it basically means you have to rewrite
it every six months and um I find it
pretty fun. It's part of the process. Um
you know you get to get to restart and
and and and rethink it. You know we're
working on we're about to release a new
version of a harness like in the next
week or two. Uh and then and then we're
already thinking about the one after
that as well. I I think that leads to a
a set of questions I had for you on just
like how does not as an engineering and
product and research organization work
now that you have the power of um coding
agents as well because I imagine like
your willingness to rewrite the harness
goes up dramatically if you're like
agents are going to help me do it.
>> Yeah, that's extremely true. Yeah, I
mean yeah, it's been it's been really
fun to use the coding agents. I think
the ambition of what I even consider
building has has has gone up a lot. What
do you think has most dramatically
changed in how you think about how um
engineering and product should work at
notion over the last two three years?
>> Yeah, I mean it's it's definitely
changed multiple times. I mean in terms
of the coding agents, we kind of went
through multiple eras. There was kind of
like the tab autocomplete era and then
we and then we got into sort of
inserting rewriting some code u but but
it wasn't really until the the agents
started working. I I would say like
early last year we started to adopt the
agents like I started using cloud code I
think around April of last year that was
a huge unlock like I would say the the
the big shift there is that you know you
can really push on getting these agents
to end to end you know implement and and
verify and maintain stuff but it but it
requires pretty significant thought in
terms of how you architect things and
what is the verification loop um but but
but the upshot is I think if you do it
well you can be much more ambitious
about what you're building and also make
it much more robust than you could have
done uh with with with humans writing
it. And then the flip side is if you do
it badly, it's all slop.
>> Does that change your lens of like what
teams should look like at notion like
size, seniority, anything like that?
>> Yeah, I mean I would say I mean the
fundamental effect is that you know
everyone's individual impact in terms of
their output can be much higher. um and
your output increasingly depends on your
ability and willingness to use the
tools. I I think that's the fundamental
thing that's happening. And then like
like how does that play out? I think I
don't think we've seen that much impact
on the the team size really. I think we
we like to work in like smalish tiger
teams for the most part. Um I think if
you can make teams small, it's almost
always better. That was true before and
I think it's still true. Uh maybe
increasingly a little bit but but not
that much. I I think yeah the main thing
is to just like like really harness the
tools.
>> Do you think something different happens
to the median engineer in an
organization versus the 10x engineer or
the engineer 10x more willing to use the
tools?
>> Yeah, I think the the gap is bigger. You
can be like a 100 or thousandx engineer
if you're using the tools right now. I
think I think the the gap is much bigger
like the the the minimum bar has not
changed but the maximum bar has has
extremely increased. One impact it's had
internally I would say is like broadly
things feel like a little bit more messy
and chaotic I would say like but I kind
of love that I mean it's like there's
there's more pro there's way more
prototypes uh you know people are like
for example our uh uh design team made
an made an entire uh git repo they
called it the design playground and it's
essentially like a simplified notion uh
with a bunch of like UI primitives in it
>> and they've made it like really
sophisticated you it it it has like an
agent in there and like um and it's it's
pretty cool because it allows them all
the designers can can spin up like super
high fidelity prototypes
>> really quickly and so it's no longer
like like pointing at a mock and being
like like you know like like how will
this look like they'll give you like a
URL to a prototype that's that's that's
been deployed and that sort of thing is
true all the way up and down the stack
you know for all of engineering just
like a little bit more chaotic more
stuff happening um all the PRs are more
ambitious
>> do you draw a line somewhere about like
stuff that is more dangerous to touch or
sensitive like ah there's could be risk
of data loss over here or and not or is
it kind of you look at it all is it's
fair game
>> we still do reviews on all the pull
requests and and I would say and you
know all the pull requests are now
written by agents they're often like
larger and and and more complex that's
like the worst part but the better part
is that they're often like a much better
tested and we can demand sort of a much
better testing for the things that merit
I never produce a PR that like hasn't
been like fully ant tested anymore. And
so it's like you can get to a pretty
high degree of confidence that it that
it works, but it requires like you're
not just vibe coding by by saying the
thing you want. You're sort of thinking
carefully about like what is the thing
I'm like what is the change I'm trying
to make and like and and how can it be
verified and how can it be deployed
safely and then enlisting the agent to
to help you with that process.
>> When you think about where you said the
general assistant like doesn't quite
exist yet. Um, what's the what do you
imagine notions agent agents being able
to do like over the next year or two
that are still unblocked? They're still
blocked by either capability or your
harness work.
>> We struggled for a few years to build an
agent. Um, and you know, it always like
like sort of worked but then you know
wasn't that useful largely just it was
too early. So we you know we we tried to
to build an agent I would say actually
three or four times and then uh we
finally launched it uh last fall so like
last August September. Um so the you
fuse notion AI now it's like the full
agent that has access to everything in
notion pretty much. Um so that that that
totally works. I would say like the a
lot of the original vision that we had
totally works now. Um and it you know
it's like like fully shipped. Last
August or September, we shipped our
personal agent. U so it's pretty much
every user in notion has an agent and it
basically it has access to all all the
things that the user has access to. So
you know it can create a database for
you. It can update things, create
documents, it can search search the web,
do research and then the second big
thing uh that we just launched last week
actually was u custom agents. So you can
basically you can create a new custom
agent give it a name and unlike the
personal agent uh by default it doesn't
have access to anything. Uh so you have
to grant it access but then once you do
it can actually run autonomously in the
background. So for example you can give
it access to its own database to file
tasks let's say and then you can attach
it to a slack channel and then it will
start responding to people on Slack and
filing tasks. That's that's that's one
use case. Another one is maybe you could
um you could give it access to a
database of like weekly reports and then
and then let it search the web or search
your workspace. And so it's sort of a
custom agent sort of represents some
work or job some some knowledge work
task that you want to be done
autonomously. One thing I'm really
excited about this going forward is is
um we want it to be extremely good at
sort of bootstrapping its own
capabilities basically from an initial
kernel allowing it to basically
bootstrap itself to do anything right.
So even for example maybe u uh building
an integration that we don't support yet
deploying that and then and then using
it.
>> So you imagine that notion agents are
actually the broader definition of agent
where like writing code is a tool it's
pretty close to yeah
>> I think it's pretty key. Yeah I think I
I think of coding agents as like the
kernel of AGI. AGI will be a coding
agent. Um and and and and code is just a
really really useful uh a primitive for
representing like deterministic logic.
The thing that's really exciting about
it um we're applying it to to a
knowledge work agent is that it can
bootstrap a capability you know so yeah
like I said if integration doesn't exist
it can build it um if if it needs to uh
you know connect itself to a new data
source it can do that
>> given you have a you know notion is at
scale but is operating in a landscape of
productivity and platform players that
are at even more scale right um many of
these will end up with their own agents
lots of people from the labs to the
Microsoft world are trying to integrate
other data sources. So you have this
like cross attempt to integrate and
index like how do you think that plays
out? Like what do you what do you
imagine that notion agents are best at
or what they have the right to go do?
>> If you look at the landscape like I I
would sort of say there's the labs and
then there's maybe the the the software
platforms and then there's maybe like
infrastructure. In terms of the labs,
you know, we see ourselves as kind of
like the the Switzerland for models. We
think and our customers they, you know,
they don't want to be locked into a
certain certain labs model. They're
always uh releasing new versions any
given month. One is better than the
other. Um so we want to be a a place
where basically you can you can easily
get access to all the best models um at
any time and you can easily switch
around.
>> Do you think open source plays into that
as well?
>> Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I think the open
source models are actually getting
really good. There's like the four
different Chinese models now that are
that are quite good. We actually just uh
released one of them in our agent uh
last week and and we're going to do all
four for sure. Um they're they're
actually quite good and they're and and
they're way cheaper than the the
frontier models. So I think there's
there's a lot of use cases where where
where you'd want that and we want to
give that as an option in terms of like
the other you know so you know we think
of our role as sort of taking all the
best models that we can creating a
really high quality state-of-the-art
agent implementations where where people
can easily and conveniently get access
to them and then making sort of a
collaborative workspace that is really
good for for humans and for the agents
uh to to to coordinate on. I think it's
it's something that's that's very needed
in the world and we're just trying to do
it in a really tasteful wellexecuted
way.
>> You were describing you need the index
to make the agents good. Um you give the
agents access to the tools that we
humans have in notion. How do you think
about um the structure of notion and
like where it's like useful or even like
not useful or relevant for agents like
blocks and databases and such?
>> It's all still pretty useful. Um
extremely useful. it uh there there's
been a a challenge to sort of you know
we want to make it really convenient for
the agent. I think that's that's a new
thing that that didn't exist. You know,
in in the past it was convenient for
humans and then we also made APIs
convenient for humans writing code
>> to use our API. Uh so we essentially
have a new customer which is the agent.
At first that was definitely a problem
you know. So for example like our our
API uh uses this this crazy JSON format
for blocks that by default is like crazy
verbose and like like horrible for the
agent. But we basically took on that
challenge and um designed uh just really
convenient APIs for the agent. We
created sort of a markdown dialect that
um looks like the default normal
markdown but it's sort of enhanced with
uh all the notion blocks. Um and the
models are really good at it. It works
really well. Uh so so that's how it
reads and writes to pages. And then uh
for databases uh we we use a SQLite. Um
so so basically it's the guess the speak
and SQLite which also works really well.
So the default thing did not work really
well. Uh but then we just like like took
that on as an engineering challenge and
and I would say now we have like
extremely convenient APIs that the
agents are are really naturally good at.
>> How did you uh understand or figure out
what would make the API better for
agents?
>> That's a good question. Yeah, I would
say it's a it's a combination of just
trying things. It's it's it's very
empirical. So, so we're just playing
around and like like noticing, oh, it's
not very good at that. Oh, that's way
too many tokens. How can we make this
smaller? And then a little bit of just
like like first principles thinking of
like, you know, what is it the models
are being trained on and what's what's
in their prior? What do they know? And
what what do we think it would naturally
be good at? And and like like how does
the agent loop work and like what what
would be the convenient efficient
pattern for for accessing these things?
Um, and so and then just you know a lot
of playing around. I hear user research
where the user is actually agent and
then you know ongoing eval.
>> Yeah. I mean user Yeah. You just chat
with it.
>> The user is always there. It's ready to
talk to you.
>> Yeah. Actually, that is wonderful where
you have infinite access to it.
>> You have infinite access to it. Yeah.
And and you can you can script and scale
the access as well.
>> I assume you have actually I know you do
because you walked in. You're like,
"Hey, I need to get access to the Wi-Fi.
I need power. We can't block the agents
while we're doing this." Um what do you
have running right now? Tell me about
your setup. I'm working on a new
prototype and so I have a couple agents
I'm working on that. Um and then yeah,
my setup these days is just um either
claw code or codeex. I like the the the
CLI tools. Um they're they're they're
super simple and like work pretty well.
I'm I'm pretty comfortable in the CLI.
So, and then yeah, my my
>> you don't need my generated game CLI
commands.
>> It's it's a very cool idea. Um, I would
say, yeah, my my my whole goal these
days is essentially to just have as many
running as possible and to run them all
the time. And you know, so for example,
like every night before I go to bed, I'm
I'm like, "Okay, I
>> Let's go, guys.
>> Yeah. Basically, what I have to do is
make sure that I've given it enough
stuff that by the time I wake up in the
morning, it it will still not be done.
And so I've maximum
>> That's victory.
>> Yeah, that's that's victory. Yeah.
>> So, yeah, like I've I've I've done that
I would say last last five nights pretty
well. My personal record is that I've
had a a coding agent running for I think
it was 13 days straight uh without
stopping and just just basically working
through like tasks.
>> Well, well prompted. Yes. I I admit to
having woken up in the middle of the
night at least multiple times this week
and just being like, "Are you still
going?"
>> Yeah, I know. Yeah. It's it it's kind of
nerve-wracking. I I always like there's
always like I I'll check it one last
time before bed and just really make
sure that it's still spinning.
>> What about on the notion agent side?
Like do you have a workflow there that
is core to daily work?
>> Yeah. I mean I mean I I use our personal
agent all the time. So it's it it has
all the context about about our company
and everything that's going on, you
know. So like for example, last night I
was asking it about um how the custom
agents launch was was going and like
like like what the what the signals were
getting from it. We're super useful for
that. And then for I I have many custom
agents that are that are running. U my
my my personal favorite is I have a
email triage agent. So it has access to
all of my work and personal emails. Um
and it just uh wakes up every day and
just archives all the stuff I don't need
to see. Train it over time to uh to to
learn my preferences.
>> Do you actually label data for it?
>> It's pretty to do actually. So all you
have to do is you make the agent and
then you give it access to email and
then you you can make a blank page. It's
like it's memory
>> and you let it edit that page and then
you just say okay now go look at my
emails and then interview me ask me
which things you know so sort of it will
like propose things that it thinks it
should archive
>> and then you can kind of correct it and
then we'll use that to essentially
generate like a list of rules about like
like what it thinks are correct or not.
And so for the first couple days I was
sort of like like like uh correcting it
on things. After a couple weeks or so, I
I I I dropped the approval entirely and
it just automatically archives all the
things I need to see now.
>> Wow.
It It completely solved my email
problems cuz for me, like I don't I
don't use email that much for work
stuff. Like it's it's mostly in Slack.
95% of the personal emails and working
emails that I get, I don't need to see
at all. And so it's just a waste of
time. Uh and so it it it completely
solved that. So now when I have my
inbox, it's like only stuff I need to
see. I've got lots of uh custom agents
running. Uh there's another one um that
I built that uh uh triages uh customer
fe u all all internal feedback and and
and
bugs. So we have a Slack channel where
basically people just just uh post
random like like product feedback and
bugs. In the past it was it would sort
of sometimes get answered but then
sometimes like like half-hazardly get
ignored just because you know there's so
many teams where things uh so its entire
job is just to route it to the right
place. uh and and it it uses a similar
sort of like like memory pattern where
it sort of learns on the fly uh where
it's supposed to file bugs uh and then
over time it's built up like like
hundreds of roles that it just um sort
of like like learned over time, you
know. So for example like if there's a
there's a bug about the mobile app, it
knows to route to the mobile team and
then a file a task in their database.
>> Do you look at that um like the
generated and updated memory to like
because it's legible to you to say like
did that make sense to me? I think I did
it I did at first. Uh but then sort of
once you trust it's kind of working, you
just you kind of ignore it and then if
if it ever breaks, I'll I'll go fix it.
Yeah, it it'll break every now and then
and then um
>> but the benefit reading your email is
>> here.
>> Yeah, just not read it. So yeah. Um
yeah, I I mean generally I would say
yeah the the general pattern I follow is
sort of I I build it as a prototype. I
have it in sort of like an approval mode
where I'm sort of, you know, watching it
closely and then but then after it runs
a bunch of times, you kind of trust that
it's working. And then
>> is there anything you do internally at
notion to um make sure non-technical
teams have the intuition for how to
build agents or how to like express that
productivity too?
>> Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, we
do uh sort of workshops and hackathons
pretty frequently. So like for example
like a month ago I did a I did a
hackathon with uh the the people team
and sort of sort of got them the the
people team has been amazing. They're
actually one of the the highest adopters
of custom agents.
>> You know they do all these kind of
workflows in like Slack and notion kind
of like like manual work like that and
um and yeah I would say yeah like like
people are super excited to to try it
and sort of like like maybe just need
like a little bit of a push in terms of
intuition and like like getting them
started. Um, but then honestly I've been
super impressed like I I think the
concept is like kind of intuitive sort
of like like once you get once you get
past sort of a little bit of the
technical barrier of like what is a
prompt and like what is the agent and
how does it get triggered and woken up
and like like how does that even work?
But then once you sort of get past that,
I think it's actually a very humanlike
interface.
>> Yeah. Maybe the maybe the biggest
barrier is actually just getting people
to try and assuming it's going to work
at all. Right.
>> Yeah. Yeah. You and Ivan originally met
on the internet tools for thought
community. Um it feels like you know the
tools we have for thinking are very
different now. Has your like core
conception of notion changed over the
last few years because of all the AI
stuff like what what is the what what
thinking does the tool do for you?
Should agents do for you? What do you
get to do?
>> Yeah, I mean it's I would say changed
quite a lot. I mean, broadly speaking,
before AI, our our our our goal was to
create the best tool for humans to
directly perform their work.
>> And then now the goal is to create the
best tool for humans to manage agents to
do the work for them.
>> That's a big shift.
>> That's a pretty big shift. Uh it's it's
pretty fundamental. Um but it it turns
out that you need most of the same
primitives. uh you actually all the
primitives that we built are actually
still extremely useful. It's it's more
that we just needed some some new
primitives like like representing what
is an agent and you know how does it
interact with your pages and databases
but you know you still need the same
primitives. You still need a document.
It's an unstructured way to you know to
write stuff. Uh agents love to write
markdown documents. So
>> yeah,
>> it's still very relevant and you still
need a database. It's um you still need
structured data. you know, if you're
working with your your swarm of like 100
background coding agents, you don't want
to have 100 chat threads. You want a
kemb board. It's, you know, the same as
before.
>> Makes sense. You still need the uh the
coordination structure. What is one
thing that just because you're ahead of
the on this stuff and then trying to
figure out how to bring, you know,
notion and then users along with you.
What is something that's really changed
about um how you personally like build
even in the last six months? I mean,
it's completely changed. I haven't
written code since like last summer. I
don't type code anymore.
>> Yeah. It's it's it's completely shifted.
I mean, we went from humans type all the
code to like we're still typing, but we
like tab complete to sort of like we
talk to the agent and it sort of does
little tasks for us, but we are still in
the outer loop. And then now it's more
like I I design a endto-end task that
involves like making some change and end
to end verifying it. And then I'm just
the the outer you the outer verifier
sort of like like double checking at the
very end that it that it's correct and
if it's going off the rails kind of like
like monitoring it. Um so it's a it's a
complete shift is you know I'm I'm now
like the agent manager instead of the
coder.
>> Amazing. Well um thanks Simon. This has
been a super great discussion about how
we're all going to become Asian managers
and uh uh hopefully in notion.
>> Cool. Yeah.
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Ask follow-up questions or revisit key timestamps.
Simon Last, co-founder of Notion, discusses the company's aggressive embrace of AI, initiated by their early access to GPT-4 in 2022. Notion's vision evolved from a short-term writing assistant to a long-term general agent capable of utilizing all Notion tools. The company launched its AI writer in February 2023, followed by a Q&A feature with semantic indexing in October 2023, and later expanded to index external data sources like Slack and Google Drive. Simon highlights the engineering challenges in building an effective indexing system for diverse content, emphasizing an empirical and iterative approach. Due to rapid AI progress, Notion rewrites its AI harness every six months. Coding agents have dramatically increased the ambition of engineering projects, leading to higher individual impact, more prototypes, and better-tested code. Notion has released both personal agents, which have access to user content, and custom agents, which can run autonomously for specific tasks like email triage or feedback routing. Notion views itself as a "Switzerland for models," integrating various frontier and open-source models, and adapting its APIs with a markdown dialect for blocks and SQLite for databases to be agent-friendly. Simon notes his personal shift from a coder to an "agent manager," overseeing agent-driven tasks.
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