Skip to content
Matt's Second Brain

Notion backend

Why Notion

  • Team-shareable — your knowledge base is already where your collaborators are.
  • Rich blocks (toggles, callouts, embeds) for human consumption.
  • No host to manage; no Docker; no port to forward.

Set up the integration

  1. Visit https://www.notion.so/profile/integrations
  2. Create a new internal integration; copy the secret (secret_xxxxx)
  3. In Notion, create a page (e.g. “Claude Memory”)
  4. Open the page → Share → invite the integration
  5. Copy the page id from the URL

Configure the MCP

Terminal window
export BRAIN_BACKEND=notion
export BRAIN_NOTION_TOKEN=secret_xxxxx
export BRAIN_NOTION_ROOT_PAGE=<root-page-id>

Layout in Notion

  • Root page: the one you shared with the integration
  • Child pages for Standards, Decisions, Lessons Learned, Apps, Reviews, Drafts
  • Each brain_remember creates a child page under the appropriate category, with title + body + tag-line block

Limitations vs other backends

  • Notion API has rate limits — brain_scan_transcripts may need to slow down for large transcript counts.
  • brain_update is currently append-only — it adds an “updated” block rather than replacing existing block content (Notion’s API requires per-block surgery; PRs welcome).
  • Tags are added as inline #tag paragraph blocks rather than database multi-select properties (works without requiring a database).
  • Search uses Notion’s own search endpoint — less granular than Trilium’s query language.

PRs to expand the Notion adapter (database-backed tags, full block-replacement, multi-select properties) are welcome — see the source.