Notion 3.5 release roundup, verified 2026-05-25
Notion updates, May 2026: every new feature in the 3.5 release, sorted by who feels it
May 2026 was a wide release for Notion. Twenty distinct line items across two release dates, only one of which is a pure UI feature (merge cells in simple tables). The rest is plumbing: Workers, a CLI, an External Agents API with Claude and Codex as launch partners, a Markdown API, admin-side cost controls for Custom Agents, and four developer-changelog items. The other write-ups list these by ship order. This one sorts them by the audience that actually feels each change.
Direct answer (verified 2026-05-25)
Notion shipped two releases in May 2026. The big one is Notion 3.5: Developer Platform on May 13, 2026, which added Notion Workers (hosted code runtime, free during beta, credit pricing starting Aug 11, 2026), the Notion CLI, the External Agents API (Claude, Codex, and Decagon are the alpha launch partners), the Notion Agent SDK, a Markdown API for reading and writing pages as Markdown, a new developer portal at app.notion.com/developers, workspace-scoped OAuth and personal access tokens, the Agents Hall of Fame template gallery, four developer-changelog items (meeting notes query endpoint, a 10,000-result pagination cap with a new request_status field, multi-value property filters, and agent-tool fixes), and one pure UI feature: merge cells in simple tables. The May 5, 2026 release added Custom Agent admin controls: per-agent credit limits, a credits dashboard, anomaly detection that auto-pauses unusual spending, and an approval flow for member-requested limit raises. The authoritative source is the release page at notion.com/releases/2026-05-13 and the developer changelog at developers.notion.com/page/changelog.
The 20-line release, in one inventory
Twenty items across two release dates. The audience column is the honest filter: only one row in the whole release matters to a Notion user with no integrations, six matter to anyone running or governing agents in a workspace, and thirteen are for the people who write code against Notion. Skim the audience column first.
1
Everyday user
4
Agent operator
15
Integration developer
| Feature | Audience | Status | Shipped | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Merge cells in simple tables | Everyday user | GA | May 13 | Spreadsheet-style cell merging in simple tables. The only pure-UI feature in the whole May release. |
| Custom Agent admin controls | Agent operator | GA | May 5 | Per-agent credit limits, workspace-level caps (Enterprise), credit dashboard with per-agent spend and activity logs, email and in-app alerts at threshold, auto-pause on depletion, anomaly detection that pauses fast-spending agents, and a member-requests-admin-approves flow for raises. |
| Agents Hall of Fame | Agent operator | GA | May 13 | A curated gallery of pre-built Custom Agents with setup checklists and starter prompts, contributed by teams like Ramp, Clay, and Vercel. |
| External Agents API | Agent operator | Alpha | May 13 | External agents (Claude, Codex, Decagon are the named launch partners) get a controlled hook into Notion to act on pages and work alongside Notion's own agents. Alpha. |
| Notion Agent SDK | Agent operator | Alpha | May 13 | The other direction: embed Notion's own agents inside other apps and dashboards. Alpha. |
| Notion Workers | Integration developer | Beta | May 13 | Hosted runtime for custom code. Deploy through the CLI, run in a secure sandbox on Notion's infrastructure. Free during beta. Pricing switches to a Notion credits model on August 11, 2026. |
| Notion CLI | Integration developer | GA | May 13 | Command-line interface for developers and coding agents. Sign in, read and write Notion content, build and deploy Workers. |
| Markdown API | Integration developer | GA | May 13 | Read and write Notion pages as Markdown. The shortest possible bridge between a Notion page and any tool that already speaks Markdown. |
| Sync Any Data Source | Integration developer | Beta | May 13 | Connect external APIs (Zendesk, Salesforce, anything) to Notion databases without standing up your own server. Workers do the integration on Notion's infrastructure. |
| Build Custom Tools for Agents | Integration developer | Beta | May 13 | Ship deterministic code via Workers as a tool an agent can call. Cheaper and more reliable than asking an LLM to reason about the same task. |
| Bidirectional webhooks | Integration developer | Beta | May 13 | Webhooks now run in both directions. Any external app can trigger a Notion Worker that receives the event, runs your logic, and acts inside Notion or calls other APIs. |
| Developer Portal at app.notion.com/developers | Integration developer | GA | May 13 | A dedicated hub for creating and managing connections, tokens, and Workers. Replaces the older settings-tab pattern. |
| Workspace-scoped OAuth and personal access tokens | Integration developer | GA | May 13 | Tokens that scope cleanly to a workspace instead of the older one-token-per-integration shape. Personal access tokens for scripts and quick CLI usage. |
| Connections built by any member | Integration developer | GA | May 13 | Building a connection no longer requires Workspace Owner. Any member can ship one. |
| MCP improvements | Integration developer | GA | May 13 | Notion's MCP server now reaches Meeting Notes and block comments. Database create and update calls are 91% more token-efficient. |
| Rebuilt developer docs with AI assistant | Integration developer | GA | May 13 | Streamlined developer documentation with a built-in AI assistant that answers questions against the current docs. |
| Meeting notes query endpoint | Integration developer | GA | May 13 | Returns AI meeting notes scoped to the integration's user. Optional filter, sort, and limit. Attendee aliases are normalized. |
| 10,000-result pagination cap | Integration developer | GA | May 13 | Data source and view query endpoints stop at 10,000 matched rows. A new request_status field in the response flags when the result set was truncated. The most consequential change for any existing large-database sync. |
| Multi-value property filters | Integration developer | GA | May 13 | equals and does_not_equal on select and status, plus contains and does_not_contain on multi_select, now accept an array of values instead of forcing an or block. |
| Agent-tool fixes | Integration developer | GA | May 13 | Search tool keeps Slack DM and private-channel results when the Slack integration is enabled, fetch tool accepts any first-party Notion domain, fetched page resources now carry an is_archived flag. |
Sources: Notion 3.5 release notes at notion.com/releases/2026-05-13, May 5 admin release at notion.com/releases/2026-05-05, developer changelog at developers.notion.com/page/changelog.
Three audiences, three different releases hidden inside this one
- 1
Everyday user
One change: merge cells in simple tables. If that does not affect your week, your week is unchanged.
- 2
Agent operator
Custom Agent admin controls, Agents Hall of Fame, External Agents API (Claude / Codex / Decagon partners), Notion Agent SDK. Governance and reach at the same time.
- 3
Integration developer
Workers, CLI, Markdown API, bidirectional webhooks, developer portal, expanded permissions, MCP improvements, the four changelog items. Most of the release lives here.
The one thing the everyday Notion user actually gets
Merge cells in simple tables. That is the entire end-user surface of the May 2026 release. It is the gesture every spreadsheet has had for decades, finally available in Notion's lightweight simple-table block. If you write meeting notes, weekly reviews, or quick reference tables inside a Notion page, that is a real ergonomic win. If you spent the month waiting for an editor feature, a new view type, a better search, or a UI for managing your sidebar, the release does not have one for you.
The honest framing for May is that Notion shipped a platform release, not a product release. The product-shaped line items are next month's problem. This month is plumbing.
What changed for agent operators
If you run Custom Agents inside a Notion workspace, May was the month two opposite things landed at the same time. On May 5, governance arrived: per-agent credit limits, workspace-level caps for Enterprise, a credits dashboard with per-agent spend trends and activity logs, email and in-app alerts as a limit approaches, automatic pause when credits deplete, anomaly detection that pauses agents spending unusually fast, and a member-requests-admin-approves flow for raises. Eight days later, on May 13, reach expanded: the External Agents API brought Claude, Codex, and Decagon into the same surface as Notion's own agents, and the Agents Hall of Fame seeded a gallery of pre-built patterns from teams like Ramp, Clay, and Vercel.
The order is not an accident. Notion's own write-up notes that teams had created more than a million Custom Agents in the two months since the beta launched. The governance layer came first because the capacity needed it.
“Teams have created more than a million Custom Agents since the beta launch two months prior.”
Notion, May 5 2026 release announcement
The anchor change: External Agents API with Claude and Codex as launch partners
The single most architecturally significant line in the whole release is the External Agents API. It lets agents built outside Notion show up inside Notion's agent surface and act on Notion content, under workspace-level governance. The launch partners named in Notion's own announcement are Claude, Codex, and Decagon. Two of those three are the same agent backends that the entire current class of desktop AI wrappers (including this site's product) already runs.
Below is the shape, drawn out. Three external agents on the left, one new Notion-side surface in the middle, and the workspace assets those agents can now reach on the right. The Notion Agent SDK runs in the opposite direction (Notion's agents embedded inside other apps) and is not in this diagram.
External Agents API: external agent runtimes get a controlled hook into Notion
The detail to slow down on: this is the inverse of how a desktop agent reaches Notion today. A desktop agent (Fazm is the example I can speak to, since I build it) runs Claude Code or Codex locally on your Mac and reaches outward into Notion through the browser extension, driving the real notion.so tab in your already-logged-in browser. The External Agents API runs the same Claude / Codex agents inside Notion's infrastructure and reaches inward into Notion. Two opposite topologies, the same underlying agent loop. Neither makes the other obsolete: an agent that lives inside one workspace and an agent that lives on your machine and works across every app you own serve different scopes.
The partners list is currently three names and the API is alpha as of mid-May 2026. Treat the surface shape as the news. Treat the partner list as the snapshot.
What changed for integration developers
Thirteen of the twenty release items live here, and the shape is one big bet: Notion is moving from being a place your code reads and writes to from outside, to being a hosted runtime where parts of your code can also run. Workers is the headline. The CLI is how you ship code to Workers. The Markdown API and the bidirectional webhooks are the wire formats. Workspace-scoped tokens, personal access tokens, and the new developer portal are the auth and surface around the new runtime. Allowing any member (not only Workspace Owners) to build a connection is the policy change that makes the runtime actually usable inside a team.
On top of that platform shift, the developer changelog adds four things to the older REST API. Three are additive (meeting notes endpoint, multi-value filters, agent-tool fixes). One is a quiet contract change: the 10,000-result pagination cap on data source and view query endpoints, with a new request_status field in the response. Before this release, paging until has_more was false meant you had the whole result set. After, it can also mean you hit the cap, and the only way to tell is request_status. Any existing sync of a database that could ever exceed ten thousand matching rows has a real branch to add, not a logged warning.
The pricing date worth circling is August 11, 2026: that is when Notion Workers switches from free-during-beta to credit-based pricing. Any Workers-shipped integration built today starts metering against credits that day.
As of May 13 2026 announcement
The named launch partners on the External Agents API alpha
Claude
Anthropic's coding agent. Already the backend for a large class of macOS desktop wrappers; now also bookable as an External Agent inside a Notion workspace.
Codex
OpenAI's coding agent. Same shape: also a backend for desktop wrappers via codex-acp, now also an External Agent inside Notion.
Decagon
Customer-experience AI agents. The non-coding launch partner; useful as the contrast point that this is an agent surface, not a coding surface.
The one thing nothing in this release changes
The REST API is still a deliberately bounded surface. Even after Workers, the CLI, Markdown reads, External Agents, and four additional changelog items, there is still no public endpoint for rearranging a database view, accepting an in-editor Notion AI suggestion, changing workspace member permissions, or moving a page between teamspaces. Those are UI gestures, and a UI gesture without an endpoint stays a UI gesture.
For tasks that live only in the client, a desktop agent that drives the real app (over the browser extension, since Notion's desktop accessibility tree underdescribes block boundaries inside the editor) is still the path. The May release does not narrow that gap; it widens the hosted-runtime surface that sits next to it. Use the API for everything the API covers; reach for a desktop agent only for the gestures the API does not.
Have a Notion workflow that touches the gap between the API and the UI?
Walk through it with us and see whether the new External Agents API, a Notion Worker, or a desktop agent driving the real notion.so tab is the right fit for your case.
Frequently asked questions
Frequently asked questions
What did Notion ship in May 2026?
Two releases. The May 13, 2026 release (Notion 3.5: Developer Platform) is the bigger one and introduces Notion Workers (a hosted runtime for custom code), the Notion CLI, an External Agents API with Claude, Codex, and Decagon as launch partners, the Notion Agent SDK for embedding Notion agents inside other apps, a Markdown API for reading and writing pages as Markdown, a rebuilt developer portal at app.notion.com/developers, workspace-scoped OAuth tokens and personal access tokens, expanded permissions so any member can build connections, an Agents Hall of Fame template gallery, and four developer-changelog items (a meeting notes query endpoint, a 10,000-result pagination cap with a request_status field, multi-value filters on select / status / multi_select, and agent-tool fixes). It also added one product UI feature: merge cells in simple tables. The May 5, 2026 release shipped Custom Agent controls for admins, including per-agent credit limits, a credits dashboard, anomaly detection that automatically pauses unusual spending, and an approval flow for member requests for higher limits.
Which May 2026 Notion update is the most consequential?
Honest answer: the External Agents API plus Notion Workers. Together they change Notion from a place agents read and write to from outside into a hosted runtime where agents and integration code can also run. That is a bigger architectural shift than any single feature. The pagination cap is the most consequential change for any existing integration syncing large databases, because the contract for paging changed without breaking the wire format. For an end user with no integrations, the only visible change is merge cells in simple tables.
What are Notion Workers and why does pricing matter?
Notion Workers is a hosted runtime where you deploy custom code through the new CLI and run it in a secure sandbox on Notion's infrastructure. The code can sync external APIs into Notion databases, run as a tool for an agent (cheaper than asking an LLM to reason about the same task), or receive webhooks from external apps and trigger Notion actions. Workers is free during the beta, with pricing that switches to a Notion credits model on August 11, 2026. The pricing date is the date to circle: any production Worker built today will start metering against credits in August. The official source is the 3.5 release notes at notion.com/releases/2026-05-13.
What does the External Agents API actually do?
It lets agents built outside Notion show up inside Notion's agent surface and act on Notion content. Notion's launch announcement names Claude, Codex, and Decagon as alpha partners. The shape is that an external agent gets a controlled hook into Notion (read pages, take actions on pages, work alongside Notion's own agents) without being rebuilt as a native Notion feature. This sits next to the Notion Agent SDK, which goes the other direction: it lets Notion agents be embedded inside external apps and dashboards. Both are alpha as of mid-May 2026.
Are there any pure UI updates in the May 2026 Notion release?
One. Merge cells in simple tables, the same gesture every spreadsheet has had for decades. Everything else in the 3.5 release is on the developer platform or agent layers. If you are reading the changelog as an end-user looking for new editor features, that is the only line for you, and the rest of the release is plumbing.
How do the May 5 admin Custom Agent controls fit into the May 2026 picture?
They are the safety layer that makes the rest of the release tolerable at scale. The admin features include per-agent credit limits, workspace-level credit caps (Enterprise), a centralized credits dashboard with per-agent spend trends and activity logs, email and in-app alerts when an agent approaches its limit, automatic pause when credits deplete, anomaly detection that pauses agents spending unusually fast, and a request-approval flow when members ask for higher limits. Notion's announcement cites teams creating more than a million Custom Agents since the beta launched. Two months later they shipped admin controls. The order matters: capacity first, governance second.
What about the developer changelog items? Are those separate from the 3.5 release?
They land under the same release umbrella. The four items are: a meeting notes query endpoint (returns AI meeting notes scoped to the integration's user, accepts filter / sort / limit), a 10,000-result pagination cap on data source and view query endpoints with a new request_status field that flags truncated result sets, multi-value filters that let equals / does_not_equal on select and status, and contains / does_not_contain on multi_select take an array of values, and agent-tool fixes (search tool keeps Slack DM and private-channel results when the Slack integration is enabled, fetch tool accepts any first-party Notion domain, fetched page resources now carry an is_archived flag). The pagination cap is the one to slow down on; the others are additive.
Where do I find the authoritative source for any of this?
The 3.5 release page is at notion.com/releases/2026-05-13, the May 5 admin release at notion.com/releases/2026-05-05, the always-current developer changelog at developers.notion.com/page/changelog, the new developer portal at app.notion.com/developers, and the official JavaScript SDK releases at github.com/makenotion/notion-sdk-js. This page is a snapshot dated 2026-05-25. For anything time-sensitive, the developer changelog and release pages are the source of truth.
How does Notion's External Agents API relate to desktop wrappers like Fazm?
Opposite topologies, same underlying agent. The External Agents API brings Claude and Codex into Notion's hosted runtime so the agent runs inside Notion's infrastructure and acts on Notion content. Fazm runs Claude Code and Codex (via the same Anthropic ACP and codex-acp adapters) locally on macOS, with chats that survive a restart and a browser extension that drives the real notion.so tab in your already-logged-in browser. So both stacks lean on the same agent loops; one runs them server-side scoped to Notion, the other runs them on your Mac and reaches into Notion (and every other app) through accessibility APIs and your browser. The choice between them is a question of scope: an agent that lives inside one workspace versus an agent that lives on your machine and works across every app you own.
Related reading
Notion API updates, May 2026
Zoomed in on the four developer-changelog items: meeting notes endpoint, 10k pagination cap, multi-value filters, and agent-tool fixes.
Notion AI roadmap, 2026
Where Notion's AI surface is heading across 2026, separate from this single-month release roundup.
Webhooks for Notion integration
The bidirectional webhook pattern, useful background for the new Workers-triggered webhook flow shipped in 3.5.
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