Custom Agents Sharing and Permissions

Custom Agents automate work across your Notion workspace and connected tools. Understanding how permissions work helps you safely share agents while keeping your data secure.

Key difference from Notion Agent:

• Notion AI acts as you and respects your personal permissions. It only sees what you can see.

• Custom Agents act as specialized team members with their own permissions. They have access to specific resources you grant them.

Custom Agents have two types of permissions that work together:

1. What the agent can access: The specific Notion pages, databases, and connected apps you grant the agent permission to use.

2. Who can access the agent: The people you share the agent with and what they can do with it.

Example:

Your finance team creates a Custom Agent called BudgetBot to help answer questions about spending and budget approvals.

• The finance team gives BudgetBot access to private pages like budget templates, approval workflows, and department spending guidelines.

• The finance team gives department leads Can view and interact permissions to BudgetBot.

• Department leads with access to BudgetBot can now ask it questions and get answers using the finance team’s internal docs, even though the leads don't have direct access to those pages.

This empowers department leads to make informed decisions faster. They can ask BudgetBot for any budget information, from quick summaries to full document content, without needing direct access to every finance team page.

When you create a Custom Agent, you explicitly choose what it can access in the Tools and Access settings. Custom Agents can access:

• Notion pages and databases - Select specific pages or databases.

• Connected apps - Slack channels, MCP, Calendar, Mail.

• Permission levels - Can view, Can comment, Can edit.

By default, new agents have no access to all pages in the workspace. Creators must explicitly enable this and accept the warning modal.

The agent can only access resources you explicitly give it permission to use. It can't access anything else in your workspace. There are no inherited permissions from anyone (whether the creator or the user of the agent).

This also includes database row permissions. A Custom Agent responds using the agent’s own access, not the permissions of the person who triggered it. So if the agent can see more rows than the end user, the agent may expose information the end user can’t access directly.

• To grant view access to a Notion resource, you must have at least view access on that resource.

• To grant any greater level of access beyond view, you must have Full Access to share that resource.

Share your Custom Agent with your team just like a Notion page by clicking Share at the top of the page. Custom Agents have three permission levels that determine who can use and edit them.

• Use the agent to ask questions or run tasks.

• See the agent's answers and results.

• View agent settings and instructions in read-only mode.

• Everything in Can view and interact.

• View and modify agent instructions.

• View all chats users have had with the Custom Agent.

• Add or remove Notion pages and databases.

• Ability to edit settings and instructions, with the exception of third-party connections others enabled.

• Everything in Can edit.

• Share the agent with others.

• Delete the agent.

For integrations, Notion validates that anyone configuring the agent has access to the resource they're editing. For example, if Michael set up a Slack channel that only he can access, other editors can't edit or view that resource—they can only delete it or set up a new one.

What guests and restricted members can do:

• View the output agents have produced in Notion pages or databases that are shared with them.

• Make edits to pages or databases which may trigger already configured Custom Agents to run.

What guests and restricted members cannot do:

• Create Custom Agents.

• Edit agent settings (unless explicitly given

  Can edit permission).

• Ask questions and receive answers based on what the agent can access.

Workspace admins can manage Custom Agents across the organization using the following tools and controls.

• Search and view all Custom Agents in your workspace.

• See who created each agent and when it was last active.

• Disable and re-enable agent editing, chatting, and triggers to stop automated runs.

• Enterprise only: Change permissions and delete any agent, even if you don't have access to it.

To access the Agent Directory, go to Settings, select Notion AI from the sidebar, enter the Agents tab. Browse or search for agents in your workspace.

Restrict who can create Custom Agents:

1. Go to Settings > Notion AI.

2. Enter Agents tabs and go to Control who can create agents.

3. Choose who can create agents: Workspace owners only (default), All workspace members, Workspace owners + added groups only.

• See what pages and databases each Custom Agent can access.

• Manage agent permissions on specific resources.

• Remove agents from accessing sensitive content.

To access Content search, go to Settings > Content search and use the Shared with filter to select a Custom Agent.

• Full history of all Custom Agent actions.

• Filter by agent, user, date, or action type.

To access the Audit Log, go to Settings > Audit log and filter for Custom Agent events by choosing the agent from the Users/Agents dropdown.

• Identify most-used and unused agents.

• Monitor adoption and value.

To access AI Analytics Go to Settings > Analytics and enter the AI tab.

Transferring ownership ensures business-critical agents continue running when users leave the workspace. After 7 days of no ownership, the agent stops running.

1. Go to Settings > Members and enter the Recently Left tab.

2. Recently left users will have agents show up as "private agents" in the content re-provisioning flow.

3. Choose the new owner and confirm the transfer.

Transferring ownership is also supported via Public API.