Bring your codebase into context with Notion's GitHub integration

Your engineering teams bring ideas to life through tools like GitHub—managing code, tracking issues, and collaborating on pull requests. But when different teams use separate tools—engineers in GitHub and others elsewhere—important updates can get scattered and fall through the cracks. This creates a frustrating cycle of context switching and reduces time spent on actual development.

Notion's GitHub integration isn't just about convenience; it's about fostering a deeper connection between code and context. With this integration, your project roadmap, design specs, meeting notes, and even user feedback all exist in a dynamic relationship with the code itself.

In this guide, you'll learn how to:

• Keep all your GitHub items and Notion tasks in one place— no more switching between tools

• Create custom views and database relations using synced databases

• Give your whole team visibility into development progress, even if they don't use GitHub

• Get quick insights into your codebase and Notion workflows using Notion AI

Imagine you're working on a project to boost your mobile app's UI experience. You want to keep your team in the loop about what's happening with your issues and pull requests, but you don't want to spend time switching between tools or sending constant updates. Let's walk through how to create a more connected workspace—-

First, let's add a GitHub pull request (PR) property to your database. This connects your Notion pages to GitHub issues and PRs. Here's how—

• Navigate to the + sign at the top right of your Notion database to add a new property.

• Then, pick GitHub Pull Requests from the connections list.

Once enabled, you can paste relevant pull requests into this field. The best part? Any updates to a GitHub pull request (PR) sync instantly to Notion, so your whole team stays in the loop without any extra work.

Just like with GitHub, you can use magic keywords in your Notion tasks too. These special keywords in your pull request descriptions automatically link—and even change the status of—issues. This streamlines your workflow and keeps everything organized.

Here's how it works —

• When your PR description includes magic words like 'referring to' or 'relates to' a task, it automatically creates a link between the PR and the Notion task. This saves you from manually copying and pasting GitHub PR links into Notion to create relations.

• Similarly, if your PR description uses magic words associated with ‘closing’ or ‘finishing’ a task, the Notion task will be marked as ‘done’ when the PR is merged.

GitHub comments help you and your team ask questions, share ideas and discuss code. And since these discussions often shape important project decisions, you can now bring them right into your Notion pages — keeping all your context in one place.

• To enable this, click on the GitHub property in your database and select Edit property.

• Then, turn on Activity Comments.

Notion also automatically adds backlinks from your Notion tasks to GitHub. To toggle Linkbacks in GitHub on or off, click the GitHub Pull Request property in your database and select Edit property.

When someone comments on a pull request, that comment shows up automatically in your linked Notion page. This keeps stakeholders like your Product Manager in the loop about technical decisions without them having to leave their project planning view. Plus, other engineers can easily reference these discussions later when working on similar features.

Synced databases let you bring data from other platforms directly into Notion. These syncs update automatically, but keep in mind they're one-way only— any changes need to happen in the original platform (in our case, GitHub) to show up in Notion.

Now that you've synced your GitHub issues and pull requests to your Notion database, you can set up custom views that match your workflow. For example, a project manager on your engineering team could create views filtered by engineer assignments or by issue status (open vs. closed).

To create a new view, click the + sign at the top right corner of your database. Here are some useful ways to customize your views—

• Add views based on assignee—You can filter by the "Assignee" property to see all pull requests or issues assigned to specific team members. This makes it easy to track individual workloads and responsibilities.

• Add views based on issue status—You can also filter by "Status" to see all open pull requests or issues that need review or closed pull requests ready to deploy. This helps identify bottlenecks and track overall progress in your development pipeline.

Depending on your team's needs, you may need to experiment with different combinations to find what works best. Custom views make it easy to track progress—showing you what's happening and who's working on what in a clear, simple way.

Database relations in Notion act as bridges, letting you establish meaningful connections between GitHub pull requests and other important data like project roadmaps, tasks, and documentation.

Let's say you're managing an engineering team building a new e-commerce app. You want to keep track of all your GitHub issues and pull requests in one place, so everyone can stay aligned on progress right from your Notion project database. Here's how you can use database relations to keep everything connected—

• Map your projects to your issues— Start by adding a then link your projects database to your synced issues database. This allows you to easily connect relevant PRs and issues to each project.

• Connect your code to what matters— Link each project to your company goals. This helps teams see how even small code changes contribute to the bigger picture, keeping everyone moving forward together.

Using database relations helps teams track dependencies between features and code changes while making it easier to find and reference important technical decisions.

Plenty of organizations find it's more efficient to keep GitHub access mainly for developers, and then use Notion as the central spot for project updates. Even if you don't need direct access to GitHub, it can still be really valuable in a couple of ways—

Imagine you're sharing a project update about mobile cache improvements. You want to give stakeholders insight into the engineering work without drowning them in technical details. With Notion, you can add GitHub references to your docs that paint a clear picture of the work. Here are some simple ways to do this—

• Use link previews for pull requests and issues— For example, you can preview an issue that tracks a bug fix in your technical docs, or show a pull request that implements a new feature in your product specs.

• Link your code right in your docs—Like pull requests and issues, you can bring code snippets right into your Notion pages. This makes it easy to look at code together, explain how things work, or talk through changes. For example, grab a permalink to specific lines of code from GitHub and add them to your troubleshooting guides to make them more useful.

When GitHub updates automatically sync to your Notion workspace, you make it easy for cross-functional stakeholders to follow progress in one familiar place. Here's how teams can use this integration to work better together—

• Product support can respond faster to bug reports— Product operations teams can track bug fix progress in their bug reports database, giving cross-functional partners real-time updates without disrupting engineering work.

• Product managers can time product announcements perfectly—Product managers can get more visibility into development timelines by tracking feature progress through synced GitHub data. By following merged pull requests in their product launch database, they'll know exactly when features are ready to announce.

• Design can track UI changes from idea to implementation— Designers can see exactly when their UI/UX updates move from concept to code by tracking pull requests in their Notion workspace. For instance, they can follow along as developers build that new navigation menu they designed, right from their design system database.

• Get quick answers about your code—Ask Notion AI to help you understand technical docs and codebases. Try questions like "What's the structure of our login system?" or "Show me PRs for the login feature from last month."

• Keep everyone in the loop—Teams can track development progress without interrupting engineers. For example, try "Give me a summary of open mobile app issues."

• Find what you need fast—Notion AI can search through GitHub markdown files, READMEs, PRs, and issues from the past year. Just ask something like "What documentation changes did we make to the API last quarter?"

By bringing GitHub updates directly into Notion, we're creating one place where everyone can stay in sync. Your developers can focus on writing great code instead of updating statuses, and everyone else gets visibility without switching tools or interrupting the engineering team. The result? A more efficient, collaborative workspace where both technical and non-technical team members stay aligned—without any extra work.