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What is n8n? The 30,000-foot overview before you build
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.
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šŸ‘‹ Welcome to The Agent Lab. Start here.
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
šŸ‘‹ Welcome to The Agent Lab. Start here.
Agents repairing agents! My latest experiment!
Using LangChain agents to diagnose and repair n8n workflow errors autonomously. I built this (and 8 other Langchain agents) to wow the hiring manager at Langchain in my interview with them this morning I run a lot of workflows in n8n. When one fails, a global error handler catches it and hands it to a LangGraph agent. The agent diagnoses the failure and drafts a fix with Anthropic, then passes that fix to a different model from OpenAI to review and approve before anything is written. That second step is the whole point, and the design is model agnostic. The proposer and the reviewer are just two seats, and you can drop any model into either one. Right now Claude drafts the fix and an OpenAI model approves it, so no single model marks its own homework. The fix only goes live after that independent, cross-vendor review. Then the agent applies it through the n8n API and re-runs the workflow to confirm it actually worked. In the demo I break a workflow on purpose and let the agent repair it end to end. It triaged the error, proposed the fix, got it approved, wrote it back, and the workflow ran clean. The whole thing cost under 6 cents, and every step is traceable in LangSmith. I triggered this run by hand so it was easy to follow, but the agent is set to run automatically the moment a new error lands. It is still in testing, and I am keeping it that way on purpose, but the autonomous loop is the point. That last part matters more than the fix. When agents act on their own inside your systems, you have to see exactly what they did. Observability is not a nice-to-have, it is the architecture. . #AIAgents #n8n #LangGraph #AIOps #Automation
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How to set up Google API + OAuth for n8n (step by step)
Before a single Google automation works in n8n, your agent needs permission to talk to Google. This is the one-time setup that unlocks all of it. Do it once and you reuse the same credential across everything you build after. Here is the whole thing, start to finish: 1. Create a clean Google Cloud project just for your automations. 2. Enable the Google APIs your agents actually use: Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Sheets, Drive. 3. Configure the OAuth consent screen. 4. Create an OAuth client (web application) and add the redirect URI from your own n8n instance. 5. Copy your Client ID and Secret, and download the JSON. 6. Add the scopes for the services you want, then add yourself as a test user so the login actually works. 7. Connect it all as a reusable Google credential in n8n, and test it. The video walks through every step on screen, so follow along with your own console open in another tab. One habit to build early: never keep your Client ID and Secret in plain text. Download the JSON, store it somewhere encrypted, and remember you can spin up a fresh OAuth client any time. Losing a key is not a crisis. VaultWarden is a great opensource password manager and vault. Why this one is first: it is the prerequisite for the builds coming next, including the email assistant workflow. Get it set up once and every Google automation after this just works. Follow along: - Watch the video above. - n8n's full Documentation - Google Cloud Console - New here? Grab the free starter kit (local n8n in Docker) so you have a place to build: Work through it, then drop a comment telling us what you connected first. Stuck on a step? Post your operating system and where you got stuck and we will walk you through it. Welcome to The Agent Lab. Let's build.
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