N8N

When to Use This Skill

USE when:

• Building integrations between 400+ services (Slack, Gmail, Notion, Airtable, etc.)
• Creating visual workflows accessible to non-developers
• Self-hosting is required for data sovereignty and compliance
• Need webhook-triggered automations with real-time processing
• Building internal tool automations and business process automation
• Connecting APIs without writing extensive code
• Rapid prototyping of automation workflows
• Need human-in-the-loop approval workflows

DON'T USE when:

• Orchestrating complex data pipelines with dependencies (use Airflow)
• CI/CD pipelines tightly coupled with git (use GitHub Actions)
• Need sub-second latency requirements (use direct API calls)
• Processing massive datasets (use dedicated ETL tools)
• Require enterprise audit compliance out-of-box (evaluate requirements)
• Simple single-trigger cron jobs (use systemd timers)

Prerequisites

Installation Options

Option 1: npm (Development)

# Install globally
npm install n8n -g

# Start n8n
n8n start

# Access UI at http://localhost:5678

See sub-skills for full details.

Development Setup

# Clone for custom node development
git clone https://github.com/n8n-io/n8n.git
cd n8n

# Install dependencies
pnpm install

# Build
pnpm build

# Start development server
pnpm dev

Version History

Resources

• n8n Documentation
• n8n Community
• n8n Workflow Templates
• n8n GitHub Repository
• Custom Node Development
• n8n API Reference

This skill provides production-ready patterns for n8n workflow automation, tested across enterprise integration scenarios handling thousands of daily executions.

Sub-Skills

• 1. Basic Workflow Structure
• 2. Webhook Triggers
• 3. Scheduled Workflows
• 4. Conditional Branching and Error Handling
• 5. Data Transformation with Code Node (+1)
• 7. Custom Node Development
• 8. Workflow Templates and Subworkflows
• Integration with Slack, Google Sheets, and Email
• Integration with GitHub and Jira
• 1. Workflow Organization (+4)
• Common Issues (+1)