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Notion’s Token Town: 5 Rebuilds, 100+ Tools, MCP vs CLIs and the Software Factory Future — Simon Last & Sarah Sachs of Notion

15 Apr 2026 34 published claims 3 attributable people

Speakers in the public record

Claim mix

belief 20preference 6evaluation 5uncertainty 2commitment 1

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Every row below preserves an exact excerpt. Identified speakers are linked; unresolved voices are labeled and excluded from people counts.

Claim ledger

The useful parts, with receipts.

34 published records

01 / evaluation

That works well, of course, but that’s not really the most, um. I would say that’s not the product that, that drives revenue.

“That works well, of course, but that’s not really the most, um. I would say that’s not the product that, that drives revenue.”
Speaker
Sarah Sachs
Publisher
Latent Space

02 / belief

I think we’re sort of just moving up the abstraction ladder and then the human role becomes more about observing and maintaining the outer system.

“I think we’re sort of just moving up the abstraction ladder and then the human role becomes more about observing and maintaining the outer system.”
Speaker
Simon Last
Publisher
Latent Space

05 / belief

I mean, that was, I would say that was a big learning is just, you know, really be, be savvy and really careful thinking about what the model wants in terms of, you know, its environment and, and, and cater around that.

“I mean, that was, I would say that was a big learning is just, you know, really be, be savvy and really careful thinking about what the model wants in terms of, you know, its environment and, and, and cater around that.”
Speaker
Simon Last
Publisher
Latent Space

07 / belief

I think one thing that’s becoming more clear is I think like, like, uh, coding agents are the kernel of EGI, sort of, everything is a coding agent.

“I think one thing that’s becoming more clear is I think like, like, uh, coding agents are the kernel of EGI, sort of, everything is a coding agent.”
Speaker
Simon Last
Publisher
Latent Space

09 / belief

I mean, we try to make it as easy as possible to set up, but we want it to be pretty deep and sophisticated. And I think a huge part of that is the operator needs to be able to interrogate.

“I mean, we try to make it as easy as possible to set up, but we want it to be pretty deep and sophisticated. And I think a huge part of that is the operator needs to be able to interrogate.”
Speaker
Simon Last
Publisher
Latent Space

11 / uncertainty

I don’t know why. Um, but the other thing is that, like, I I was just talking about this with a peer, like how much is ranking important versus like, uh, being able to do parallel exhaustive queries.

“I don’t know why. Um, but the other thing is that, like, I I was just talking about this with a peer, like how much is ranking important versus like, uh, being able to do parallel exhaustive queries.”
Speaker
Sarah Sachs
Publisher
Latent Space

12 / belief

I think the quality difference that’s interesting is, um, even though companies that say they’re selling the same, a, it’s really into like quanti quantization, but like companies that say they’re selling the same model through different vendors, whether it be through first party or Bedrock, Azure, et cetera.

“I think the quality difference that’s interesting is, um, even though companies that say they’re selling the same, a, it’s really into like quanti quantization, but like companies that say they’re selling the same model through different vendors, whether it be through first party or Bedrock, Azure, et cetera.”
Speaker
Sarah Sachs
Publisher
Latent Space

13 / belief

I would say turning point, I can think about like the week and a half that we all came together on this as we were building custom agents, was that alignment that we’re not trying to build for everyone here.

“I would say turning point, I can think about like the week and a half that we all came together on this as we were building custom agents, was that alignment that we’re not trying to build for everyone here.”
Speaker
Sarah Sachs
Publisher
Latent Space

14 / belief

The other thing I would say is the, um, you know, unlike a lab, we aren’t fully incentivized just for you to use as many tokens as possible.

“The other thing I would say is the, um, you know, unlike a lab, we aren’t fully incentivized just for you to use as many tokens as possible.”
Speaker
Simon Last
Publisher
Latent Space

15 / belief

The, the CEO’s gonna force everyone to wear a wristband look, I mean, the slice of the problem that, that we care about is like, you know, can the company have all the context of what everyone said at every single meeting, and then use that to, yeah.

“The, the CEO’s gonna force everyone to wear a wristband look, I mean, the slice of the problem that, that we care about is like, you know, can the company have all the context of what everyone said at every single meeting, and then use that to, yeah.”
Speaker
Simon Last
Publisher
Latent Space

16 / belief

Um, what’s difficult is like that market that I think right now is no man’s land of where reasoning models were six months ago, that the nano haikus, et cetera, haven’t caught up to, because now we’re just paying more for those, um, for like extra capability that we didn’t necessarily need and so are our customers.

“Um, what’s difficult is like that market that I think right now is no man’s land of where reasoning models were six months ago, that the nano haikus, et cetera, haven’t caught up to, because now we’re just paying more for those, um, for like extra capability that we didn’t necessarily need and so are our customers.”
Speaker
Sarah Sachs
Publisher
Latent Space

17 / commitment

There’s a, I won’t say which coding Frontier Lab, but there was a point where he had like outlived like the thread length and context length uhhuh that that coding agent provided.

“There’s a, I won’t say which coding Frontier Lab, but there was a point where he had like outlived like the thread length and context length uhhuh that that coding agent provided.”
Speaker
Sarah Sachs
Publisher
Latent Space

19 / belief

I think there’s, there’s definitely a lot of use cases where, where you don’t want like a full coding agent with a compute run time.

“I think there’s, there’s definitely a lot of use cases where, where you don’t want like a full coding agent with a compute run time.”
Speaker
Simon Last
Publisher
Latent Space

20 / belief

I think that’s, that’s pretty interesting because if you, if you had a model that really knows your company, I think that would be like a huge quality uplift.

“I think that’s, that’s pretty interesting because if you, if you had a model that really knows your company, I think that would be like a huge quality uplift.”
Speaker
Simon Last
Publisher
Latent Space

21 / belief

I, I, I think that like we, we really closely partner with the Frontier Labs on capabilities and we also have to have strong conviction on, as those capabilities move.

“I, I, I think that like we, we really closely partner with the Frontier Labs on capabilities and we also have to have strong conviction on, as those capabilities move.”
Speaker
Sarah Sachs
Publisher
Latent Space

22 / belief

I think every software engineer in notion this summer went through like this, um, sheer, um, one of our engineering leads of the company called it, like every software engineer is going through the, the, uh, identity crisis that every manager goes through, where all of a sudden they realize their ability to write code is less important than their ability to delegate in context switch.

“I think every software engineer in notion this summer went through like this, um, sheer, um, one of our engineering leads of the company called it, like every software engineer is going through the, the, uh, identity crisis that every manager goes through, where all of a sudden they realize their ability to write code is less important than their ability to delegate in context switch.”
Speaker
Sarah Sachs
Publisher
Latent Space

23 / belief

I mean, but auto is heavily, I think what’s actually been hard for us is to tell convince people that auto is not just our cheapest, dumbest model, but actually the model that’s best for the task that you wanna do.

“I mean, but auto is heavily, I think what’s actually been hard for us is to tell convince people that auto is not just our cheapest, dumbest model, but actually the model that’s best for the task that you wanna do.”
Speaker
Sarah Sachs
Publisher
Latent Space

25 / evaluation

I think there’s like two different versions. So one is like, we just have a, a, a solid bench of senior engineers that come and go on what we call the Simon Vortex and Productionizing what we built, right?

“I think there’s like two different versions. So one is like, we just have a, a, a solid bench of senior engineers that come and go on what we call the Simon Vortex and Productionizing what we built, right?”
Speaker
Sarah Sachs
Publisher
Latent Space

26 / evaluation

With notion, it’s almost like more of the expertise is at the edge because you as a platform, you’re like so horizontal that the end user is not really the same.

“With notion, it’s almost like more of the expertise is at the edge because you as a platform, you’re like so horizontal that the end user is not really the same.”
Speaker
Sarah Sachs
Publisher
Latent Space

28 / evaluation

Like there’s a lot of platform work that we do need to, like solidify a little bit. So sometimes it’ll be in dev for a couple weeks before it makes it to prod just because we still have to like, make it robust, make it HIPAA compliant, ZDR compliant, figure out the right contracting with the vendor, whatever it is.

“Like there’s a lot of platform work that we do need to, like solidify a little bit. So sometimes it’ll be in dev for a couple weeks before it makes it to prod just because we still have to like, make it robust, make it HIPAA compliant, ZDR compliant, figure out the right contracting with the vendor, whatever it is.”
Speaker
Sarah Sachs
Publisher
Latent Space

29 / preference

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.

“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.”
Speaker
Sarah Sachs
Publisher
Latent Space

30 / preference

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.

“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.”
Speaker
Sarah Sachs
Publisher
Latent Space

31 / preference

Um, but it’s because we’re thinking about the fact that our users to do their, to do their daily work, need to export PDFs, not because we’re like, Hmm, I think a computer tool could be cool.

“Um, but it’s because we’re thinking about the fact that our users to do their, to do their daily work, need to export PDFs, not because we’re like, Hmm, I think a computer tool could be cool.”
Speaker
Sarah Sachs
Publisher
Latent Space

32 / preference

I, I think we, you know, like, like generally, generally the way we do these things is, you know, you first make it possible, maybe like a sort of janky way. So I, I, I think the way I set ‘em up is like, you know, we created like a new database that was sort of like issues mm-hmm.

“I, I think we, you know, like, like generally, generally the way we do these things is, you know, you first make it possible, maybe like a sort of janky way. So I, I, I think the way I set ‘em up is like, you know, we created like a new database that was sort of like issues mm-hmm.”
Speaker
Simon Last
Publisher
Latent Space

33 / preference

Like, we want you to decide if you want to have Opus Auto Triage all of your emails, we will actually give you nudges in the product to rethink if that’s the right choice.

“Like, we want you to decide if you want to have Opus Auto Triage all of your emails, we will actually give you nudges in the product to rethink if that’s the right choice.”
Speaker
Sarah Sachs
Publisher
Latent Space

34 / evaluation

We, we sort of designed our own like, like tool calling framework and then we tried to fine tune the models to, uh, to use it over multiple turns. Um, and because it, it didn’t work well out the box, I think.

“We, we sort of designed our own like, like tool calling framework and then we tried to fine tune the models to, uh, to use it over multiple turns. Um, and because it, it didn’t work well out the box, I think.”
Speaker
Simon Last
Publisher
Latent Space
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