n8n Knowledge

n8n Knowledge

Search nodes, inspect schemas, browse templates, and validate workflow JSON offline before touching a live n8n instance.

Workflow

1. Discover nodes — search the materialized node index by capability; filter with nodeCategoryId / nodeCategoryName or includeBrowseCategories=true for the browse tree; set includeOperations=true for resource/operation/mode trees on integration nodes.
2. Inspect schema — fetch one node by type, or batch up to 10 filtered lookups via requests[] with resource/operation/mode context.
3. Find examples — search templates with mode=by_metadata (categoryName, minViews), facetField + facetValue (nodes / apps / categories), or keyword search; then fetch a template with mode=structure or mode=full.
4. Validate offline — validate draft workflow JSON before deploy to catch missing node names, malformed connection edges, Set typeVersion mismatches, and unknown node types.
5. Learn patterns — browse mined workflow patterns, AI pattern summaries, and technique guides; use category-based node suggestions for technique slugs from the guides listing.
6. Repair drafts — run workflow repair in preview mode (applyFixes=false) before applying fixes to workflow JSON.

Deploy-safe workflow JSON

• Connections map by node name — each source is an object, not an array: "Manual Trigger": {"main": [[{"node": "Set Message", "type": "main", "index": 0}]]}. A bare array under the source name is rejected by the n8n API.
• Every connection edge needs node, type (usually main), and index (usually 0). Edges like {"node": "Set"} are rejected by the n8n API.
• Match each node's typeVersion to the index: inspect node config examples for your parameter shape, or run offline validate/repair to align against catalog exemplars and supported node versions.
• Wrap dynamic values as ={{ $json.field }}; bare $json.field strings fail at runtime on many nodes.

Gotchas

• Node types are exact strings such as n8n-nodes-base.httpRequest or @n8n/n8n-nodes-langchain.agent.
• Community preview names in upstream feeds are normalized to installed package names in this index.
• Template workflow JSON lives on the inner workflow.workflow path in n8n's API; this index stores the parsed workflow already.
• Offline validation catches structural issues only; live instance validation still needs the user's n8n connection.