Is Notion doomed?

Hey,

A fascinating debate popped up on Reddit this week. With Claude making it easy for non-technical teams to build custom dashboards using React and Postgres, people are asking a big question. Is Notion doomed in six months?

Short answer: No.

Long answer: The barrier to entry for building software is officially on the floor. But if you have ever bought enterprise software, you know it is purchased because it scales, offers security, and provides a shared structure. Tools like Notion are about collaboration and keeping a single source of truth for your team.

Instead of replacing Notion, AI is just sitting on top of it. Users are heavily utilizing Claude and Notion's API to parse meeting notes, build wikis, and organize databases. The interface for interacting with information might change, but the underlying workspace still needs to exist. Notion is trying to be the best of both worlds, and that makes it a great long-term bet.

So buckle up, and let's dive into it.

-Nick

In Today’s Email 👀 

• The Permissions Overhaul

• Skills & Workers

• Generate Images with Notion AI

3 Tips / Updates

1/ GRANULAR DATABASE PERMISSIONS

Notion just rolled out a massive, highly requested update for database permissions. Previously, allowing an external freelancer or a client to add tasks to a database without seeing everyone else's data was incredibly frustrating and required messy workarounds.

Now, you can grant someone "can create pages" permission without giving them access to the entire database. They can simply add an entry, and an automatic page-level rule allows them to edit the page they just created.

This is also a massive upgrade for internal teams. You can now lock down a global database (like your company documents) so the general team has no access by default. You can still allow them to create new documents, and then use a simple database automation to grant general "team" access whenever a new page is added. This makes hiding sensitive HR or finance documents significantly easier while keeping everyone in the same system.

2/ SKILLS AND WORKERS

Notion is quietly laying the groundwork to become an autonomous operating system. They are formalizing how we instruct AI while simultaneously opening up the platform for custom code.

First, Notion introduced "Skills" in the AI settings. Skills are self-contained instruction pages that tell your AI exactly how to do specific tasks, like formatting a proposal or writing a weekly round-up. Instead of cluttering your main agent instructions, you can save these modular skills and pull them up only when needed. Make sure you store these skill pages in a dedicated database rather than leaving them as floating pages to keep your workspace clean.

Second, Notion introduced "Workers" in an extreme pre-release alpha. Workers allow you to write custom code that runs directly on Notion's servers. This means your workspace will soon be able to make API calls to external apps natively. While it is still very early and prone to breaking, this hints at a near future where you can build Zapier-level automations directly inside your Notion databases.

3/ CREATE & EDIT IMAGES WITH NOTION AI

Notion AI can now generate and edit images directly on your page. If you are tired of hunting for the perfect stock photo or struggling with diagram tools, this is a massive workflow win. You can create cover images, realistic photos, or even styled charts and diagrams just by typing /ai image or asking the Notion AI chat.

The real power here is the refinement. You can hover over an existing image and tell the AI to "make this look more professional" or "turn this screenshot into a polished diagram." It is even smart enough to look at your current page and create a flowchart based on the text you have already written. This is currently available for Business and Enterprise plans. Note that while the chat and blocks work on desktop, mobile users are limited to generating via chat for now.

TEMPLATES THAT JUST WORK

Reset. Refocus. Reorganize. Access premium systems that streamline your work and life.

Templates for freelancers, founders, students & beyond.
From Money Tracker to Second Brain, get systems that just work.

Useful Resources

• How Chronicle hit #1 on Product Hunt using Notion: Chronicle recently hit #1 Product of the Day and generated a waitlist of over 100,000 signups. Because their team is fully remote, they built a "mission control" database in Notion to track every aspect of the launch. They overlaid feature timelines side-by-side with social post dates using calendar views, proving that great launches require deep systems and heavy planning. (🔗 See the Launch Breakdown)

• GPT-5.4 is now in Notion: OpenAI's latest and most capable model is now available in Notion's model picker. Expect faster responses and much better token efficiency for your most demanding professional workflows. The gap between planning and finished work is getting smaller every day. (🔗 Explore the Model Update)

• New Box AI Connector: You can now connect Box to Notion to search files, summarize documents, and compare changes without ever leaving your workspace. Set it up by going to Settings > Notion AI > AI Connectors. (🔗 Connect Box to Notion)

• Notion's Internal Support Agent: Notion just shared how their Customer Support team handles thousands of weekly questions. They built a Custom Agent that searches everything, provides citations, and automatically files a task when it cannot find an answer so the team can document the gap for next time. (🔗 See How the Agent Works)