Sarah Sachs: preference

Transcript context

…and. Needing language to execute deterministic tasks feels wasteful and requiring on a language model to interface with third party providers seems wasteful for tasks that don’t require it. And particularly because our custom agents are using usage-based pricing. We think of pricing as like the barrier of entry for use of our product, and we’re quite committed to making sure that it’s not wasteful. Um, not just because it’s a bad deal for our customers, but it’s also bad business. We wanna have as many buyers, like there’s a, there’s an elasticity of demand and so if we can have our agents properly execute code that calls on CLI deterministically, it’s a one-time cost, right? Versus constantly having a language model integrate with an MCP over and over and over and paying those like repeated token fees and it’s happening outside the cash window, then you’re paying for it over and over and over and it’s just kind of unnecessary and less deterministic when it doesn’t have to be. Alessio: Yeah, the open-endedness I think is like, the main thing is like, well, if I go write code to just call an API, I would never use an MCP. But then you need an NCP sometimes when you know what to call, but you don’t want it to restart versus like, I think the it built a browser from scratch is like, it’s great when you’re doing it on your own, but like if your customers were having your AI write a browser from scratch every time and you had to pay the token cost of that, yeah. You’d be like, no, no. The Chrome dev tools CP is actually pretty great. Just use that. I’m curious, how do you make that decision? Like should it be. Just straight API call very narrow. Should it be an MCP? Should it be super open-ended? Do you mean for when we ship notion capabilities or when we add capabilities to Alessio: notion AI or, Alessio: I mean, you might have a capability that the only way to do is an open-ended agent, like an agent with a coding sandbox. Yeah. In Notion ai they’re not explicit, not We also ship an MCP. Alsesio: Yeah. Yeah. In B, yeah. Alsesio: Internally. Okay. Like is there ever a discussion of like, we’re not gonna ship it because we’re not able to tie it down? Or are you happy to just like, MCP. Alsesio: Yeah. Yeah. In B, yeah. Alsesio: Internally. Okay. Like is there ever a discussion of like, we’re not gonna ship it because we’re not able to tie it down? Or are you happy to just like, um, no. I mean, there are a lot of things where we choose not to use MCP because we wanna add more high touch to quality. I think search an agent to find is like the largest instance of that, where we have. Um, slack and linear and Jira search and notion that is not using necessarily the search MCP functionality that is provided by those companies. And that’s because it’s quite critical we think, to how our agent trajectories work is for us to have a little bit more control on the functionality of the search journey. And so it usually comes from quality and there’s a long tail of things and that’s why we built an MCP client or an MCP server, excuse me, so that people can connect whatever they want. There’s that long tail, right. But we, for search particularly, I would say that’s like the primary entry point, but there are other connections as well that it’s a little bit of secret sauce about when we are okay with like MCP functionality and user driven off. And when we actually want to wanna carry a lot more ourselves. I think that there’s not really a conflict here. There’s just like different layers of the stack and different abstractions. I mean, if we were to like map it out, it’s like, you know, you’ve got CPS give you a, a way to, it’s a protocol for gaining access to tools. It’s an open protocol, so you can, you can easily get like a long tail, many things. So if you open up our, like in the tool settings, oh, that’s saw the trigger. Actually, actually, that’s something that MCP can’t do. So if you scroll down and you, and yeah. The, the tools and access, so you’re gonna a connection. Yeah. MCP is a really great way to gain access to tools or really well, but you just looked at the, the trigger why, for example, there’s no trigger protocol. And so those are things we had to build ourselves. And then there’s, there’s some integrations where we use MCP. Like, so for example, I think the, you know, the linear and the GitHub mm-hmm. Use M ccp, but, but the Slack mail, er, those are actually ones they built in house. And we spent a lot of time really fine tuning all the tools to make the really good and also like building out the triggers. So it’s just like different layers of the stack. Some things make sense sometimes. And then, you know, we just have to like, like harness the right tool at the right time. I don’t think there’s an inherent like. Strong conflict between these things. Alsesio: Do you have a canonical representation of these tools internally where like you wrap these things together, the MCP plus, the custom built? Yeah. Yeah. We have like internal abstractions for like what is a tool, what is an agent, what is a completion call? Yeah.…

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