The Notion Markdown API: A Better Way for AI Agents to Work
Why we built a custom Notion skill for OpenClaw using the Markdown API, and how it's more efficient for AI agents than block-based fetching.
At Callstack Labs, we’re big fans of Notion. We use it for almost everything: meeting recordings, calendars, client pages with ticketing integrations, project management, agency wikis, and our operations center. Every team member gets their own Notion pages for notes, tasks, and meeting recordings. Beyond operations, we also use Notion to store structured data (Notion-as-a-database) and to manage content (Notion-as-CMS), which allows us to port data from systems like Stripe.
One of Notion’s biggest advantages is that Notion AI can access all of this information and provide valuable insights during analysis. That could be a deep dive of its own.
Many businesses—especially creative agencies—use Notion too. However, it’s not all sunshine. Notion’s data model is a double-edged sword. It uses a nested data model where the generic building block is a “Block.” A block can be text, a link, a table, and more—and it can contain other blocks nested inside it. This was novel and powerful when it launched, but it presents challenges for automation.
The Problem with Block-Based APIs
The downside shows up when you consume Notion pages through the API and start dealing with how blocks are represented in API responses. We ran into this when we started using the Notion MCP, and also whenever an AI agent tried consuming page data directly from the API.
Each block has an ID and children. If a Notion page contains a list with nested sub-lists, you have to do recursive fetches to retrieve the nested items. That structure can cause agents to miss important content if they don’t fetch nested children correctly. It also creates overhead: lots of tool calls and a lot of JSON to sift through just to extract a few strings.
A Better Way: The Notion Markdown API
If you use Notion’s API to fetch or update page content, you should take advantage of the lesser-known Notion Markdown API. Notion supports Markdown at a foundational level because most block types map cleanly to Markdown (Notion calls it “Enhanced Markdown”).
AI agents fetching content directly via the API—or using Notion MCP—should prefer these Markdown endpoints. They can fetch a page, including nested content, in one shot, in a format that’s naturally agent-friendly. Updates also become simpler: the API relies on search-and-replace, an operation agents are naturally good at (it’s the same pattern they use to edit code). In most cases, the block-based APIs should be used less often and only when you specifically need block-level operations.
Efficiency with OpenClaw
Most public agent skills haven’t caught up with this approach yet, so we built a custom skill for OpenClaw to make our Notion integration more efficient. By leveraging the Markdown API, our agents can read and update project tasks, documentation, and CRM data with significantly less token overhead and higher reliability.
If you’re looking to set up OpenClaw for yourself or your team to streamline your Notion workflows, reach out at https://callstacklabs.com/openclaw-quickstart and tell us what you’re trying to achieve.