From Coder to Manager: Navigating the Shift to Agentic Engineering with Notion Co-Founder Simon Last

Key Takeaways

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  Notion is pivoting from a passive workspace to an active agent orchestrator -- the platform is moving away from being just a place where humans do work to a hub where users manage a 'swarm' of agents that can autonomously build integrations and execute tasks.

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  The real engineering challenge lies in indexing the world's messy data -- Simon highlights that the biggest hurdle isn't just the AI models themselves, but the technical 'grunt work' of semantically indexing disparate data sources like Slack and Google Drive to give agents proper context.

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  Coding agents are fundamentally changing how software itself is built -- Notion is already using its own coding agents to help build the product, signaling a shift where the role of a developer moves from writing every line of code to managing AI-driven development cycles.

Episode Description

Notion isn’t designing AI agents that just use tools. Their agents can autonomously build their own integrations, as well as write the code needed to finish a task. Sarah Guo sits down with Notion Co-Founder Simon Last to explore Notion’s rapid evolution from a simple writing assistant to a sophisticated platform for custom AI agents. Simon discusses the technical hurdles of indexing disparate data from sources like Slack and Google Drive, as well as the internal shift toward using coding agents to build Notion itself. Plus, Simon elaborates on what he sees as a fundamental transition in productivity: moving from a tool where humans do the work, to one where humans manage a swarm of agents. Sign up for new podcasts every week. Email feedback to show@no-priors.com Follow us on Twitter: @NoPriorsPod | @Saranormous | @EladGil | @simonlast | @NotionHQ Chapters: 00:00 – Cold Open 00:05 – Simon Last Introduction 00:26 – Genesis of Notion AI 04:10 – Challenge of Semantic Indexing and Retrieval 07:16 – The Six-Month Rewrite Cycle 08:12 – Notion’s Coding Agent Era 09:44 – Impact on Team Dynamics 12:49 – Launching Custom Agents 15:39 – Notion as the ‘Switzerland’ for Models 17:33 – Designing APIs for Agent Customers 20:09 – Simon’s Personal Agentic Workflows 24:48 – Notion: Tool for Work is Now A Tool for Agents 27:28 – How Building Has Changed for Simon 29:00 – Conclusion