Is Notion losing the plot?

Hey,

A few Notion updates this week that stood out.

More happening around connecting your tools together, some small fixes that make things easier, and a thread that explains why people are so split on Notion right now.

Let’s get into it.

- Nick

In Today's Email 👀

• Notion wants to run your agents (not just store your docs)

• Rollups just got way easier

• A few small fixes that actually matter

• Is the Notion hate real?

3 Tips / Updates

1/ MCP CONNECTIONS: NOTION WANTS TO BE WHERE YOUR AGENTS LIVE

Notion just published a video showing Custom Agents connecting to Amplitude, Stripe, GitHub, FigJam, and anything else with an MCP server.

MCP (Model Context Protocol) is an open-source spec that standardises how AI agents connect to external tools. Before it existed, every connection needed its own bespoke integration. MCP replaces all of that with one standard.

The shift Notion is making:

→ from where your docs live → to where your agents run work across your stack

Here is what that looks like in practice → Signups dropped last week. The goal lives in Notion, usage data lives in Amplitude, and the team aligns in FigJam. One agent connects all three. Describe the workflow in plain language and it runs end to end. No Make scenario. No copy-paste between tabs. That is the workflow MCP is replacing.

The catch is permissions. Each MCP connection runs on the credentials of whoever authenticated it, and anyone with access to that agent can use those connected tools. Scope it tightly and keep write tools on "always ask" while testing.

The five-minute test: open one Custom Agent, add one low-risk connection, run one prompt that crosses two systems. See what actually happens before you hand it the keys.

2/ ROLLUPS FINALLY SUPPORT CURRENCY AND PERCENT

Shipped Monday with almost no fanfare. You can format rollup numbers as USD, EUR, percent, or arbitrary decimals directly on the property. No formula gymnastics.

The honest version: tiny feature, meaningful win. If you've ever built a budget tracker, a CRM with deal totals, or a project dashboard with rolled-up hours, you've written a formula property whose only job was wrapping a rollup in format(...). That whole pattern is now obsolete.

The five-minute test for this week: pick the database with your worst formula soup. Click any rollup property → Edit → Number format → pick the format → set decimals. Then delete the formula property you were using to wrap it. Two minutes per database. Cleaner schema, fewer dependencies, less stuff to break.

3/ THE LITTLE FIXES THAT ACTUALLY MATTER

Not every ship is a headline feature. These are worth knowing anyway.

Breadcrumb hover previews are live. Hover any breadcrumb and you see sibling pages, including pages inside databases. Sounds small. In a deep workspace it saves you a surprising amount of clicking around.

On the API side, two things. The validation_error: "The start_cursor provided is invalid" bug is gone. If a Make scenario or webhook has ever 400'd mid-sync on you, that headache is done.

And as of April 20, big queries now cap at 10,000 results and return request_status: "incomplete" instead of paginating forever. If you're polling a large data source, move to filtered queries or webhooks.

Notion is being explicit: polling the whole thing is no longer the supported pattern.

Poll/ Is The Notion Hate Real?

A thread blew up on r/Notion this week. Someone basically said they don’t get the hate and asked people to explain it.

Main complaint is simple: Notion keeps shipping AI stuff while basic things still feel broken. Rearranging favourites is still annoying, search feels worse now that it’s mixed with AI, mobile is buggy, big databases slow everything down. And every new feature just makes the app feel heavier.

At the same time, the other side is real too.

If you’ve got a solid setup, people are doing some pretty insane stuff. AI agents, MCP workflows, automated reporting, full CRM systems. For them, Notion is the best it’s ever been.

So you’ve got this weird split:

→ casual / older users feel like things are getting worse
→ power users feel like things are getting way better

And underneath that, it’s pretty obvious what’s happening.

One small thing most people don’t know → you can actually email Notion and ask them to turn off AI features on your account if it’s getting in the way

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Quick Links & Tools

Auto-Sync your finances into Notion: Came across this tool that connects your bank directly to Notion (EU banks only). Thought it was worth sharing. It auto-populates your tables, so you don’t have to deal with CSV imports or manual updates.

Make your Notion workspace look better in 2 mins: A few small settings go a long way. Dark mode (or just pick one theme), small text + full width, one font across everything. Hide extra clutter like backlinks and comments. Keep icons + covers simple and consistent.

Comment update and delete endpoints went GA: You can now PATCH and DELETE comments via API. Multi-value filters for select/status/multi_select also went GA. SDK v5.18 / v5.19.

MCP: Slack DM and private channel results restored: If you connected Slack to your workspace and noticed the search tool was missing DM results, fixed. The fetch tool also accepts both notion.so and notion.com now.