How Braintrust saves hours a day with Custom Agents in Notion

Notion is an AI workspace that provides Custom Agents, AI tools, and a unified platform for docs, projects, and knowledge management. Notion AI includes Enterprise Search, Custom Agents, and connectors to tools like Slack and Google Drive, creating an infrastructure for intelligence across organizations.

Braintrust is an AI observability platform trusted by companies like Notion, Stripe, and Replit. As a growing startup, Braintrust maintains a builder-heavy culture and follows the philosophy that "in the age of AI, you should just refuse to do repetitive work." They have unique visibility into which companies build the highest-quality AI, as monitoring performance scores and evaluating AI systems is the basis for their product.

As Braintrust grew, busywork grew with it. VP of Marketing Morgane Palomares would start at 5 a.m. researching competitor launches, combing through Gong call transcripts for keywords, cross-checking Slack channels for new customer deals, and manually rewriting sales one-pagers—all before the team logged on. Marketing manually tracked competitor moves and customer logos. Sales needed hours of prep to understand context before calls. Customer support fielded the same questions repeatedly. The traditional solution—hiring more people to handle coordination—would slow them down and dilute their builder-heavy culture. More meetings and more tools would create the exact overhead problem AI is supposed to solve.

Braintrust built Custom Agents in Notion—specialized AI teammates that monitor multiple sources, synthesize information, route tasks, and communicate results. These agents run entire multi-step workflows without manual intervention. Custom Agents work within Notion's unified workspace where all of Braintrust's docs, meeting notes, projects, and decisions already flow. With connectors to tools like Slack and Google Drive, Notion AI can access critical information wherever it lives, creating what Braintrust calls their "infrastructure for intelligence." This foundation means Custom Agents aren't completing isolated tasks—they're working with a full picture of what's happening across the company.

Morgane built three Custom Agents—or her "buddies"—that transformed how her team gets work done:

1. **Competitive Intelligence Buddy** monitors all competitor changelogs and scans Gong call transcripts for competitive keywords, then updates sales one-pagers in Notion every morning at 9 a.m. When sales reps download PDFs, they know it's the most current information.

2. **Customer Evidence Buddy** listens to the Slack channel where sales shares closed deals and logo-usage rights. It automatically updates a customer-evidence database, sends a weekly recap to marketing, and delivers a curated "top logos" list directly to the CEO for speaking prep.

3. **Usage-Based Buddy** tracks self-serve customers to see when they hit usage thresholds, surfaces the accounts most likely to convert to enterprise, and alerts sales to prioritize outreach.

The company adopted a simple triage principle: Questions go to AI first, not into Slack messages. Customer support, for example, now asks Notion AI before asking engineers. CEO Ankur Goyal uses Notion AI as his "primary entry point to what's happening in the organization," checking project statuses, understanding customer updates, and catching up on Slack discussions without interrupting anyone.

Without Custom Agents, Morgane says she'd need contractors or additional headcount to cover these manual workflows. The real value beyond time saved is what people can do instead. There are two problems with busywork: It subtracts time for strategic thinking, and it drains people so they can't do their best work. Sales teams now show up to meetings with the complete context they need without having to waste time manually researching themselves. Every morning at 9 a.m., Braintrust's sales one-pagers quietly update themselves. Custom Agents scan competitor changelogs, enrich customer databases, and surface opportunities—all before anyone on the team opens their laptop.