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It’s been a really good first 8 months of freelancing, but it also forced me to get honest about how I run my own business.
I originally started using Notion just for myself, to keep projects, clients, finances and daily work in one place. Over time, I shared it with a few freelancer friends (slightly less organised than me 😅) and that slowly turned into creating and sharing Notion templates.
Recently, I realised I was using all of them together anyway, so I brought everything into one all-in-one system.
With Contra expanding into products, it felt like the right place to continue that journey.
So this is Creative OS, the system I use to run my own freelance business.
I’d genuinely love to hear any thoughts or feedback.
For anyone curious, my other Notion templates are here:
👉 notion.com/@janadesign
The network for creativity
Join 1.25M professional creatives like you
Connect with clients, get discovered, and run your business 100% commission-free
Creatives on Contra have earned over $150M and we are just getting started
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You finish building something for a client:
Now you have to explain it to someone who doesn't know what a webhook is.
I built Runbook AI Agent — a Notion agent that turns your raw dev notes into a complete client handoff doc in seconds.
It generates:
→ Plain-English breakdown of what the system does
→ Step-by-step daily operations guide
→ Troubleshooting table for every failure mode
→ Maintenance schedule with task owners
→ Quick Reference Card your client can bookmark
Try it → https://www.notion.so/marketplace/custom-agents/runbook-builder-client-control-center
Any client. Any system. Any industry.
Your handoff done in seconds🚀
Say hello to Pitching Pat, and goodbye to wasting hours each day applying to jobs! 🤩
Every freelancer faces the same thing: when you’re fully booked, you don’t have time to pitch - and when your projects end, you’re left with an empty pipeline and a "cold start" problem.
Pitching is the most critical part of freelancing, yet it’s often the first thing to be neglected 😬
The solution: Pitching Pat - a Notion Custom Agent designed to turn that pitching grind into a quick, seamless process.
How it works:
The freelance brain 🧠: a centralized "source of truth" where the user inputs their services, portfolio, ideal clients, and unique brand voice.
The leads database: you drop in the job descriptions (via the save to Notion extension, or manually).
Pitching Pat: she cross-references the job against its brain to rate the job fit from 1-10, and if it scores 5+, she drafts a pitch that sounds exactly like you ✨
Impact: saves freelancers several hours a week by removing the "blank page" friction of filtering through and applying to jobs.
Reliability: by grounding the Agent in a specific "brain" page, it eliminates AI hallucinations and ensures every pitch is backed by REAL portfolio results ✅
Craft: designed for a "low-friction" setup - no complex third-party automations required - it’s a self-contained Notion ecosystem.
Durability: whether you’re a video editor today or a copywriter tomorrow, you simply update the "brain" page and the system evolves with your business 🙌
PS: the agent hasn't been approved yet, been going back and forth with Notion on some details, and currently waiting their response, but this is the link: https://www.notion.so/agent/331eb5f7-8d81-80ce-8157-009266613a90
Sounds like a must have
Would love to try it out
I built AstraOS — Not another basic Notion AI wrapper.
AstraOS is a full AI Team living inside Notion with 7 specialist modes that actually work together:
• Productivity Coach (Essentialism + GTD)
• Strategist (OKRs, Pre-mortems, First Principles)
• Content Writer & Social Media Re-worker
• Researcher
• Personal Assistant
• Specialist Colleague (co-founder level feedback)
• Advanced Workspace Assistant (auto-creates databases & organizes workspace)
The real differentiators:
• Smart auto-logging (no more “log this” every time)
• Built-in memory via databases
• Proper onboarding + personalization
• Can combine multiple modes in one response
• Everything stays under one clean AstraOS HQ
Most custom agents are just fancy prompts. AstraOS feels like a real team member who knows you, remembers your goals, and proactively saves your plans, research & decisions. Built for heavy Notion users who want to 10x their output. 🚀
🔗 Agent: AstraOS (pending review)
Agent is live : https://www.notion.so/marketplace/custom-agents/astraos
notion.so
Notion – The all-in-one workspace for your notes, tasks, wikis, and databases.
A tool that connects everyday work into one space. It gives you and your teams AI tools—search, writing, note-taking—inside an all-in-one, flexible workspace.
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