Insight certainty 4/5 debate potential 2/5

Frontier AI Product Development Requires Knowing When to Stop Fighting Model Limits

Sarah Sachs · Notion’s Sarah Sachs & Simon Last on Custom Agents, Evals, and the Future of Work · Apr 15, 2026 · at 7:15

Sarah Sachs, Head of AI at Notion, explains Notion's framework for navigating rapid advancements in frontier AI capabilities while developing products.

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“Is really what will set notion apart for every new capability is we have like two skills that are crucial when it comes to frontier capabilities. One is not letting yourself swim upstream. So like quickly realizing if you're just pressing against model capabilities versus not exposing the model to the right information, not having the right infrastructure set up, that in of itself is a skill of intuition. And the second is to see, okay, you're not swimming upstream, which direction is the river flowing? And what is like, how do we think ahead about the product and start building it, even if it's not great yet, so that when it is there, we're ready for it, right?”

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Assertion Not checkable as stated
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