Notion shuts down its Skiff-based email app: users chose AI agents

Notion is shutting down its own email client, built on Skiff technology, and gives a direct reason: most beta testers were already using AI agents instead. The company is changing strategy entirely and betting on an agent-based approach to inbox management.

The Skiff acquisition

In February 2024, Notion acquired Skiff, one of the few startups that seriously challenged the dominance of Google Workspace. Skiff built a private alternative: encrypted documents, collaborative editing, cloud storage and email with full end-to-end encryption.

After the deal closed, Skiff ceased operating as a standalone service. Existing users were directed to Proton Mail as the closest alternative in terms of privacy. The development team moved to Notion and began work on integrating email technology into the product ecosystem.

The new email client was meant to become a natural extension of the workspace: tasks, notes, databases and email in a single interface. The project spent several months in closed beta testing with a limited number of participants.

What the beta showed

The data overturned the original hypothesis. Most participants did not open the email client regularly, and the cause was not product quality. They had already switched to AI agents to process their incoming mail.

That does not mean the client was bad. The market simply moved faster than expected. The agent handled exactly the tasks the traditional client was built for:

• sorted and prioritized incoming mail by context
• answered routine requests from templates without user involvement
• labeled, archived and forwarded messages according to set rules
• created Notion tasks based on email content
• generated draft replies for messages that need attention

When an agent automatically closes out most of the routine, there is no reason to open a separate email UI, even if it is convenient and built into a favorite tool.

What Notion is building instead

The company officially announced a change of course: the traditional email client is being shut down, and resources are being redirected to agent infrastructure.

"We're going all in on using agents to work with incoming email," the

Notion team said.

The agent-based approach means integrating on top of existing services. The agent connects to Gmail or Outlook via API, reads and processes messages in the background, and the user sees only what truly requires a decision. The agent knows the context of the Notion workspace, so an incoming email can be automatically linked to the relevant page or task. Instead of folders and tabs, there is a smart filter that is transparent to the user.

Technically this is harder than building a client of its own: OAuth integrations, working with third-party APIs, managing permissions and privacy. But from a product standpoint it is more honest: build what users actually use.

What this means

Notion Mail is a rare example of a company abandoning a product before launch because beta data showed users had already gone another way. For the productivity-tools industry, this is a signal. AI agents are displacing specialized apps not on quality but through the very logic of usage: users no longer want to open a new interface. They want the task solved without their involvement.

Startups building "smart" email clients with polished UX now compete not only with each other but also with the agent layer on top of existing services. If Notion's email client did not survive its beta, it is worth asking which other categories of apps will come under pressure in the next two years.