Drop your answer in the comments. Tell me one thing you're trying to automate right now. It could be: - Something repetitive that's eating your time - A process you've started building but got stuck on - An idea you don't know how to approach yet Every Sunday I'll pick one submission and do a full deep dive: architecture, tool selection, flow design, and the decisions that actually matter. I'll post it here so everyone benefits. Drop yours below. — Mike

If you keep seeing n8n everywhere and want the plain-English version of what it actually is, start here. No setup required, this one is the big picture. n8n is a visual agent-orchestration platform. You build a workflow node by node and you can actually see what is happening, instead of handing everything to a black-box agent. It is no-code / low-code, it self-hosts, and it has built-in integrations for just about every app and AI model out there. I started my automation journey on it three years ago, and most of my workflows still run on it today. The reason it is worth learning comes down to two things: control and cost. - Control: you are not locked to one vendor. You can run the same job through Claude, OpenAI, or a local model and keep whichever does it best. - Cost: the only part that costs money is the AI node itself. The code, the databases, and the API calls are free, instead of paying a cloud agent to burn expensive output tokens on every request. In the video I walk through three real workflows I run (an email assistant that drafts replies, a product-photo generator, and a LinkedIn job scraper), then build a simple one from scratch so you can see how little it takes to get started. How to start: - n8n cloud is about $20/month and a fine place to begin. - But if you have a reasonably modern computer, especially an Apple Silicon Mac, self-host it free on Docker. That is what I recommend. - Want a head start? Grab the free starter kit (local n8n in Docker) This is the foundation. The hands-on builds (the Google setup, the email assistant, and more) branch off from here. Watch the overview above, then tell us in the comments: what is the first thing you want to automate? Welcome to The Agent Lab. Let's build.

Glad you're here! This is a room for people who want to actually build with AI agents, not just watch demos. Whether you wired up your first workflow last week or you've got agents running in production, you belong here. Let's kick it off. Drop an intro in the comments and tell us: 1. Who you are and what you do. 2. How long you've been playing with AI (be honest: "since last Tuesday" is a totally valid answer) 3. What you're trying to build, or what brought you here. 4. One thing you're stuck on right now (someone here has probably solved it) A few things to know: - New stuff drops regularly: workflow templates, build teardowns, and the engineering behind real deployments - No question is too basic. The people who ask are the people who build - No gatekeeping, no fluff. Share what works, ask what doesn't The fastest way to get value here is to engage. Comment on intros, jump into threads, post what you're building. See you in there. — Mike