Spec-driven development: The AI engineering workflow at Notion | Ryan Nystrom

Ryan Nystrom is a software engineer at Notion. He joined in December 2024 after Notion acquired Campsite, the team communication platform he co-founded with Brian Lovin. At Notion, he’s been a core builder of Notion AI and the Custom Agents feature launched in February 2026. He manages a team of six to seven engineers while still writing code himself, currently running Project Afterburner, a push to cut Notion’s CI time to a quarter of its current duration. What you’ll learn: - How to build a Notion AI custom agent that auto-generates your daily standup pre-read by pulling from Slack, GitHub, Honeycomb metrics, and yesterday’s meeting transcript - How to configure subagents and MCP integrations within Notion AI - How Notion’s internal “Boxy” system lets engineers @mention Codex from within Notion comments and get a full pull request with screenshots in 20 minutes - The spec-first development workflow: dictate an idea into Whisper, have Codex format it as a proper spec, commit it to the repo, and let the agent implement and verify it autonomously - Why fast CI is absolutely critical in the age of AI coding agents - How to prompt AI coding agents to defend their reasoning under pushback - Why engineering managers and even senior executives should keep writing code — Brought to you by: WorkOS—Make your app enterprise-ready today Orkes—The enterprise platform for reliable applications and agentic workflows — In this episode, we cover: (00:00) Introduction to Ryan Nystrom (02:48) How AI has upended 12+ years of the same working routine (04:30) Project Afterburner: Notion’s push to cut CI time to a quarter (09:00) Why high-frequency, high-quality meetings beat lower-frequency standups (11:10) How automated context surfaces every engineer’s work equally (12:15) Why cutting meeting prep is a burnout protection mechanism (14:26) The case for engineering managers writing code (16:13) Inside “Boxy”: Notion’s internal VM-based background agent system (20:30) Old World vs. New World code review (24:51) Prompting Codex from Notion comments (29:20) The emotions around code review (31:01) Quick recap (32:00) Spec-first development: writing and checking agent specs into the repo (35:10) The spec as changelog: version control for how a feature actually works (37:53) How engineers’ roles are evolving (39:00) Lightning round (45:21) Where to find Ryan — Tools referenced: • Notion AI: https://www.notion.com/product/ai • Notion Custom Agents: https://www.notion.com/blog/introducing-custom-agents • Codex (OpenAI): https://openai.com/codex • Claude Code (Anthropic): https://claude.ai/code • Honeycomb (observability + MCP): https://www.honeycomb.io • Whisper (OpenAI voice transcription): https://openai.com/research/whisper • Slack: https://slack.com • GitHub: https://github.com — Other references: • How Stripe built “minions”—AI coding agents that ship 1,300 PRs weekly from Slack reactions | Steve Kaliski (Stripe): https://www.chatprd.ai/how-i-ai/stripes-ai-minions-ship-1300-prs-weekly-from-a-slack-emoji • Notion 3.3 Custom Agents launch (February 24, 2026): https://www.notion.com/releases/2026-02-24 — Where to find Ryan Nystrom: X: https://x.com/ryannystrom LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryannystrom/ GitHub: https://github.com/rnystrom — Where to find Claire Vo: ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/ Website: https://clairevo.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/ X: https://x.com/clairevo — Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [redacted email].