Notion recently announced custom AI agents, but theirs only run inside Notion.
We have been building Rowboat, an open source platform for self-hosted, cross-tool, collaborative AI agents. Rowboat ships with native MCP support as well as 500+ built-in product integrations.
👉 GitHub: https://github.com/rowboatlabs/rowboat
👉 Demo: https://youtu.be/KZTP4xZM2DY
Why this matters
Work rarely lives inside one app. Email, docs, knowledge bases, internal APIs, and research sources all sit in different places. Combining these for complex real-world use cases is precisely why multi-agent orchestration is required.
We want agents that can:
✅ Run on your own infrastructure.
✅ Talk to any service.
✅ Coordinate multiple agents when needed.
✅ Remain inspectable and debuggable.
✅ Extend through MCP for custom tools.
✅ Avoid vendor lock-in.
What makes Rowboat different
| Feature | Notion Custom Agents | Rowboat (OSS) |
|---|---|---|
| Self-hosted / local runtime | No | Yes |
| Multi-agent orchestration | Limited | Yes |
| Extensible through MCP | Yes | Yes |
| Native RAG (docs and URLs) | Limited | Yes |
| Support local models | No | Yes |
| Inspectable prompts and flow | No | Yes |
Architecture philosophy
We think of agentic systems as a spectrum.
| Side of spectrum | Useful for |
|---|---|
| Deterministic pipelines with a fixed LLM call order | Repeatable workflows |
| Fully agentic orchestration | Assistants that decide how to act |
Splitting responsibilities across multiple agents reduces context pollution, makes each unit testable, and mirrors how real teams work.
We ship tested agent patterns such as manager and worker roles, internal task agents, and pipelines. This avoids visual flowchart builders that become unwieldy once the system grows.
Some things you can build today
- Meeting prep assistants that pull from email, docs, and calendar
- Twitter-based market research agents
- Triage bots for support before a human takes over
All self-hosted and fully under your control.
Try it
Repo: https://github.com/rowboatlabs/rowboat
A star helps other builders discover it 🙌
Feedback
If you self-host today, what is the biggest friction point for you: integrations, reliability (e.g., getting agents to complete complex tasks), debugging, or something else?
Top comments (1)
Hey all! We’re most excited about the ability to run truly multi-agent systems for productivity, and we'd love to hear your thoughts on the final question. What is your single biggest friction point right now? Integrations, reliability, debugging, or something else?