Battery Health Monitor with n8n & LangChain

Battery Health Monitor with n8n & LangChain: Turn Raw Telemetry into Action

Imagine never having to manually sift through battery logs again, and instead having a smart, automated system that watches your fleet, learns from history, and surfaces the right insights at the right time. That is exactly what this n8n workflow template helps you build.

In this guide you will walk through a practical journey: starting from the challenge of messy battery telemetry, shifting into what is possible with automation, then implementing a concrete n8n workflow that uses LangChain components, Hugging Face embeddings, a Redis vector store, and Google Sheets logging. By the end, you will have a reusable Battery Health Monitor that not only saves time, but becomes a building block for a more automated, focused way of working.

The problem: Telemetry without insight

Battery-powered devices constantly generate data: voltage, temperature, cycles, warnings, and long diagnostic notes. On its own, this telemetry is noisy and difficult to interpret. You might:

  • Scroll through endless logs looking for patterns.
  • Miss early warning signs of degradation or overheating.
  • Spend hours manually correlating current issues with past incidents.

This manual approach does not scale. It slows you down, eats into time you could spend improving your product, and makes it harder to respond quickly when something goes wrong.

The mindset shift: From manual checks to automated intelligence

Instead of reacting to issues one by one, you can design a system that observes, remembers, and recommends. With n8n and modern AI tooling, you can:

  • Turn incoming battery telemetry into structured, searchable knowledge.
  • Automatically compare new events against historical patterns.
  • Use an AI agent to suggest actions and log decisions for future audits.

This is not about replacing your expertise. It is about multiplying it. When you let automation handle repetitive analysis, you free yourself to focus on strategy, product quality, and scaling your operations.

The architecture: Building blocks for a smarter battery monitor

The Battery Health Monitor workflow combines a set of powerful components that work together as a cohesive system:

  • n8n for low-code orchestration, routing, and Webhook endpoints.
  • Text splitter & embeddings to convert long diagnostic notes into compact vector embeddings.
  • Redis vector store as a fast, persistent similarity search index.
  • Memory + Agent for contextual reasoning over current and past telemetry.
  • Google Sheets for a simple, auditable log of alerts and recommendations.

Each piece is modular and replaceable, so you can start simple and evolve the workflow as your fleet grows or your needs change.

How the n8n workflow works end-to-end

At a high level, the workflow follows this flow inside n8n:

  1. A Webhook receives POST telemetry from your devices.
  2. A Text Splitter breaks long notes or logs into overlapping chunks.
  3. An Embeddings node (Hugging Face) converts each chunk into a numeric vector.
  4. An Insert node stores those vectors in a Redis index named battery_health_monitor.
  5. A Query node searches Redis for similar historical events.
  6. A Tool node exposes this vector search as a tool to the Agent.
  7. A Memory node keeps recent context for the Agent.
  8. A Chat (LM) node and Agent use memory and tools to produce recommendations.
  9. A Google Sheets node appends all key details into a sheet for tracking and auditing.

What you get is a loop that continuously learns from your data, references the past, and records its own decisions. It is a small but powerful step toward an automated observability layer for your batteries.

Step-by-step: Build your Battery Health Monitor in n8n

Now let us turn this architecture into a working n8n workflow. Follow the steps below, then iterate and improve once you have it running.

1. Create the Webhook endpoint

Start by creating the entry point for your telemetry.

  • Add a Webhook node in n8n.
  • Set the HTTP method to POST.
  • Set the path to /battery_health_monitor.

This Webhook will receive JSON payloads containing battery metrics such as voltage, temperature, cycle count, and health flags. It becomes the front door for all your battery data.

2. Split long notes with a Text Splitter

Diagnostic notes and logs can be long and unstructured. Before embedding them, you want to break them into manageable pieces while preserving context.

  • Attach a Text Splitter node to the Webhook.
  • Use character-based splitting.
  • Configure:
    • chunkSize: 400
    • chunkOverlap: 40

This configuration helps the embedding model handle longer messages while still keeping enough overlap so that important context is not lost between chunks.

3. Generate embeddings with Hugging Face

Next, you convert each text chunk into a vector so you can perform similarity search later.

  • Add an Embeddings node in n8n.
  • Select the Hugging Face provider and enter your API credentials.
  • Choose an embedding model compatible with your account and set the model parameter accordingly.

The node transforms each chunk into a numeric vector representation that captures semantic meaning. These vectors are the foundation for finding similar historical events.

4. Store vectors in a Redis vector index

Now you need a fast, persistent place to store and query your embeddings.

  • Add a Redis vector store node.
  • Configure your Redis connection (host, port, authentication).
  • Set the mode to insert.
  • Use an index name such as battery_health_monitor.

Once configured, each new telemetry event will contribute its embeddings to the Redis index, gradually building a searchable knowledge base of your battery history.

5. Query the vector store for similar patterns

To make your agent context aware, you need to retrieve relevant historical chunks when new telemetry arrives.

  • Add a Query node connected to the Redis vector store.
  • Configure it to perform similarity searches against the battery_health_monitor index.

During workflow execution, this node returns the most relevant chunks for the current telemetry, such as similar failures, temperature spikes, or lifetime patterns. These results become evidence the Agent can reference when making recommendations.

6. Combine Agent, Memory, Tool, and Chat

This is where your workflow becomes more than a data pipeline. It becomes an intelligent assistant for your battery fleet.

  • Tool node – Wrap the Redis similarity query as a tool that the Agent can call when it needs historical context.
  • Memory node – Add a memory buffer to store recent interactions and outputs. Configure the memory window so the Agent can recall the latest context without being overwhelmed.
  • Chat (LM) node – Use a Hugging Face-hosted language model to generate human readable insights and recommendations.
  • Agent node – Connect the model, memory, and tool. The Agent orchestrates when to query Redis, how to interpret the results, and what to output, such as alerts, root cause hints, or structured data for logging.

With clear prompts and the right tools, the Agent can say things like: “This looks similar to previous voltage sag incidents on devices with high cycle counts. Recommended action: schedule preventive maintenance.”

7. Log everything in Google Sheets

To make your system auditable and easy to review, you can log each decision in a simple spreadsheet.

  • Add a Google Sheets node.
  • Configure it to append rows to a sheet named Log.
  • Map fields from the Agent output, including:
    • Device ID
    • Timestamp
    • Health score or state of health
    • Recommended action or alert level
    • Context links or references to similar historical events

Over time this sheet becomes a structured history of your fleet health, decisions, and outcomes, which is invaluable for audits, tuning, and continuous improvement.

Example telemetry payload

Here is a sample JSON payload you can use to test your Webhook and workflow:

{  "device_id": "BAT-1001",  "timestamp": "2025-08-31T12:34:56Z",  "voltage": 3.7,  "temperature": 42.1,  "cycle_count": 450,  "state_of_health": 78,  "notes": "Voltage sag observed during peak draw. Temperature spikes when charging."
}

Send a payload like this to your /battery_health_monitor endpoint and watch how the workflow ingests, stores, analyzes, and logs the event.

Best practices to get real value from this template

Once your Battery Health Monitor is running, the next step is tuning. Small adjustments can significantly improve the quality of your insights and the reliability of your automation.

Choosing the right embedding model

Select an embedding model that balances cost and quality. For technical telemetry and diagnostic text, models trained on technical or domain specific language often yield better similarity results. Experiment with a couple of options and compare how well they cluster similar incidents.

Optimizing chunk size and overlap

The Text Splitter configuration has a direct impact on embedding quality.

  • If chunks are too small, you lose context and the model may miss important relationships.
  • If chunks are too large, you might hit model limits or reduce similarity precision.

Use the default chunkSize: 400 and chunkOverlap: 40 as a starting point, then adjust based on your average log length and the richness of your notes.

Configuring Redis for accurate search

Redis is the engine behind your similarity search, so it needs to be aligned with your embeddings.

  • Ensure the index dimension matches the embedding vector size.
  • Choose an appropriate distance metric (for example cosine) based on the embedding model.
  • Store metadata such as device_id and timestamp so you can filter queries by device, time range, or other attributes.

With good indexing, your Agent will retrieve more relevant context and make more confident recommendations.

Designing safe and effective Agent prompts

The Agent is powerful, but it needs clear boundaries.

  • Use system level instructions that define the Agent’s role, such as “act as a battery health analyst.”
  • Ask it to only make strong recommendations when the retrieved evidence is sufficient.
  • Require it to reference similar historical cases from the vector store whenever possible.

This reduces hallucinations and keeps your outputs grounded in actual data.

Security and scalability as you grow

As your workflow becomes more central to operations, it is important to treat it like production infrastructure.

  • Protect your Webhook with API keys or signature verification.
  • Use HTTPS for secure transport and, where possible, request signing.
  • Run Redis in a managed, private network with encryption in transit.
  • Limit access to language models and monitor usage for cost control.
  • Scale out n8n workers and add rate limiting as your device fleet grows.

These steps help ensure your automated battery monitoring remains reliable and secure as you lean on it more heavily.

Turn insights into action with alerts and monitoring

Once your workflow is making recommendations, the next step is to act on them automatically when needed.

  • Trigger emails or push notifications via n8n’s email, Slack, or push nodes when the Agent flags critical conditions, such as thermal runaway risk or sudden health drops.
  • Append high priority events to a dedicated Google Sheet or database table for escalation.
  • Send metrics to Prometheus or Datadog to track trends and performance over time.

This transforms your Battery Health Monitor from a passive reporting tool into an active guardian for your fleet.

Where this template fits: Real-world use cases

This n8n workflow template is flexible enough to support many scenarios, including:

  • Monitoring battery health for EVs, scooters, or drone fleets.
  • Tracking industrial UPS and backup power systems for early warning signals.
  • Managing consumer device fleets for warranty analysis and predictive maintenance.

Use it as a starting point, then adapt it to the specific metrics, thresholds, and business rules that matter to you.

Troubleshooting and continuous improvement

As with any automation, you will learn the most by running it in the real world and iterating. Here are common issues and how to address them:

  • Empty or poor search results: Check that your embedding model is compatible with the Redis index configuration and that the index dimensions match the vector size.
  • Vague or unhelpful Agent responses: Tighten the Agent prompt, provide clearer instructions, improve memory configuration, and ensure the Tool node returns enough evidence.
  • Redis insertion errors: Verify credentials, network connectivity, and that the index exists or is created with the correct settings.

Each fix moves you toward a more reliable and powerful monitoring system.

Your next step: Use this template as a launchpad

This Battery Health Monitor pattern gives you a practical, scalable way to add context aware analysis and automated decision logging using n8n, LangChain primitives, Redis, and Hugging Face embeddings. It is fast to deploy, easy to audit via Google Sheets, and designed to be extended with more tools, alerts, and integrations as your needs grow.

Most importantly, it is a stepping stone. Once you see how this workflow transforms raw telemetry into useful action, you will start to notice other processes you can automate and improve with n8n.

Take action now:

  • Deploy the n8n workflow template.
  • Plug in your Hugging Face, Redis, and Google Sheets credentials.
  • Send a sample payload to /battery_health_monitor within the next 30 minutes.

Use that first run as a learning moment. Tweak the text splitter, try a different embedding model, or refine the Agent prompt. Each small improvement moves you closer to a robust, AI powered monitoring system that works for you around the clock.

Energy Consumption Anomaly Detector with n8n

Energy Consumption Anomaly Detector with n8n: Turn Your Data Into Insight

Every unexpected spike in energy usage, every quiet dip in consumption, is a story waiting to be told. For utilities, facility managers, and IoT operators, those stories are often buried in endless time-series data and noisy dashboards.

If you have ever felt overwhelmed by manual monitoring, rigid rules, and false alarms, you are not alone. The good news is that you can turn this chaos into clarity with automation that actually understands your data.

This guide walks you through an n8n workflow template that uses Hugging Face embeddings and Supabase vector storage to detect anomalies in energy consumption. More than just a technical setup, it is a stepping stone toward a more automated, focused, and proactive way of working.

From Manual Monitoring To Intelligent Automation

Traditional rule-based systems often feel like a game of whack-a-mole. You set thresholds, tweak rules, and still miss subtle issues or drown in false positives. As your infrastructure grows, this approach becomes harder to maintain and even harder to trust.

Instead of asking you to manually define every possible pattern, vector embeddings and semantic similarity let your system learn what “normal” looks like and spot what does not fit. It is a shift in mindset:

  • From rigid rules to flexible patterns
  • From endless tuning to data-driven thresholds
  • From reactive firefighting to proactive detection

With n8n as your automation layer, you can orchestrate this entire flow, connect it to your existing tools, and keep improving it as your needs evolve.

Why Vector Embeddings Are Powerful For Anomaly Detection

Energy data is often time-series based, noisy, and full of seasonal or contextual patterns. Trying to capture all of that with static rules is exhausting. Embeddings offer a more natural way to represent this complexity.

By converting consumption windows into vectors, you can:

  • Compare new data to historical patterns with fast similarity search
  • Detect unusual behavior that does not match past usage, even if it is subtle
  • Adapt your detection logic without rewriting dozens of rules

In this workflow, you store historical consumption chunks as embeddings in a Supabase vector store. Each new window of readings is transformed into a vector, then compared to its nearest neighbors. When similarity drops or patterns shift, you can flag anomalies, log them, and trigger actions automatically.

Mindset Shift: Think In Windows, Not Individual Points

Instead of inspecting single readings, this n8n template encourages you to think in terms of “windows” of time. Each window captures a slice of behavior, such as 60 minutes of power usage, and turns it into a semantically rich representation.

This mindset unlocks:

  • Context-aware detection, where patterns across time matter more than isolated values
  • Smoother anomaly scores, less noise, and more meaningful alerts
  • A scalable path to add more features, such as seasonal comparison or multi-device analysis

You are not just setting up a one-off workflow. You are building a foundation you can extend as your automation strategy grows.

The Architecture: Your Automation Stack At A Glance

The Energy Consumption Anomaly Detector n8n template brings together several components into a cohesive, production-ready pipeline:

  • Webhook – Receives incoming energy consumption payloads from meters, gateways, or batch jobs.
  • Splitter – Breaks long inputs (CSV or JSON time-series) into overlapping windows for embedding.
  • Hugging Face Embeddings – Converts each window into a vector representation.
  • Supabase Vector Store – Stores vectors along with metadata such as timestamps and device IDs.
  • Query / Tool Node – Finds nearest neighbors and provides data for anomaly scoring.
  • Memory & Agent – Adds context, generates human-readable explanations, and automates decisions.
  • Google Sheets – Optionally logs anomalies and decisions for review, auditing, or retraining.

Each piece is modular, so you can start simple and then refine, expand, or swap components as your system matures.

How A Single Payload Flows Through The Workflow

Picture a new batch of readings arriving from one of your meters. Here is how the n8n template processes it, step by step, turning raw numbers into actionable insight.

  1. Receive data via Webhook
    The Webhook node accepts POST requests that include:
    • device_id
    • Timestamped readings
    • Optional metadata such as location
  2. Chunk readings into windows
    The Splitter node creates rolling windows from your time-series. In the template:
    • chunkSize = 400
    • chunkOverlap = 40

    This overlap preserves continuity and helps the embeddings capture transitions smoothly.

  3. Generate embeddings with Hugging Face
    Each chunk is passed to the Hugging Face Embeddings node, which converts the window into a vector. This vector encodes the shape and behavior of the consumption pattern, not just raw numbers.
  4. Insert vectors into Supabase
    The embeddings, along with metadata, are stored in the Supabase vector index:
    • indexName = energy_consumption_anomaly_detector

    Over time, this builds a rich historical representation of how each device behaves.

  5. Query neighbors and detect anomalies
    When new data arrives, the workflow:
    • Queries nearest neighbors from the vector store
    • Feeds results into the Agent node
    • Applies anomaly logic and logs outcomes, for example in Google Sheets or another sink

The result is a loop that learns from your historical data and continuously evaluates new behavior, all orchestrated through n8n.

Smart Strategies For Anomaly Detection With Vectors

Once your data is represented as vectors, you can combine several strategies to build robust anomaly scores. This is where your creativity and domain knowledge really matter.

  • Nearest neighbor distance
    Measure how far a new window is from its k-nearest historical neighbors. If the average distance exceeds a threshold, flag it as an anomaly.
  • Local density
    Look at how densely the vector space is populated around the new point. Sparse regions often indicate unfamiliar patterns.
  • Temporal drift
    Compare the new window not only to recent data, but also to past windows from the same hour or day. This helps reveal seasonal or schedule-related deviations.
  • Hybrid ML scoring
    Combine vector-based distance with a simple model such as an isolation forest or autoencoder on numeric features. This can strengthen your detection pipeline.

Recommended Anomaly Scoring Formula

A practical starting point for an anomaly score S is:

S = alpha * normalized_distance + beta * (1 - local_density) + gamma * temporal_deviation

You can tune alpha, beta, and gamma on a validation set, ideally using historical labeled anomalies. This tuning phase is where your workflow evolves from “working” to “highly effective.”

What To Store: Data And Metadata That Unlock Insight

The quality of your anomaly detection is tightly linked to what you store alongside each embedding. In Supabase, include metadata that makes filtering and interpretation easy and fast.

Recommended fields:

  • device_id or meter_id for identifying the source
  • start_timestamp and end_timestamp for each chunk
  • Summary statistics such as mean, median, min, max, variance
  • Raw chunk hash or link to retrieve full series when needed
  • Label (optional) for supervised evaluation or manual tagging

These details make it easier to slice data by device, time window, or conditions and to debug or refine your detection logic.

Example Webhook Payload

Here is a sample payload your Webhook node might receive:

{  "device_id": "meter-01",  "readings": [  {"ts":"2025-08-31T09:00:00Z","value":12.4},  {"ts":"2025-08-31T09:01:00Z","value":12.7},  ...  ],  "metadata": {"location":"Building A"}
}

You can adapt the schema to your environment, but keep the essentials: device identifier, timestamped readings, and optional metadata.

Configuring Your n8n Nodes For Success

The template gives you a solid starting point, and a few configuration choices will help you tailor it to your environment and scale.

  • Webhook
    Set a clear path, for example energy_consumption_anomaly_detector, and secure it with a secret token in headers.
  • Splitter
    Align chunkSize and chunkOverlap with your data cadence. The default 400 points with 40 overlap works well for dense streams, but you can adjust based on your sampling rate.
  • Embeddings (Hugging Face)
    Choose a model suitable for numerical sequences or short time-series. Store your API credentials in the n8n credentials manager to keep everything secure and reusable.
  • Supabase Vector Store Insert
    Use the index name energy_consumption_anomaly_detector and include metadata fields. This enables filtered similarity search by device, time window, or other attributes.
  • Query Node
    Start with k = 10 nearest neighbors. Compute distances and feed them into your anomaly score calculation.
  • Agent Node
    Use the agent to:
    • Generate human-friendly explanations of each anomaly
    • Decide whether to notify operations or escalate
    • Append logs or comments for future analysis
  • Logging (Google Sheets or similar)
    Log anomalies, scores, decisions, and context. This creates a valuable dataset for retraining, threshold tuning, and audits.

Evaluating And Improving Your Detector Over Time

Automation is not a one-time project. It is a continuous journey. To keep improving your anomaly detector, monitor both detection quality and operational performance.

Key metrics to track:

  • True positive rate (TPR) and false positive rate (FPR) on labeled incidents
  • Time-to-detect – how long it takes from event occurrence to anomaly flag
  • Operational metrics such as:
    • API request latencies
    • Vector store query times
    • Embedding costs for Hugging Face models

Run periodic backtests by replaying historical windows through the workflow. Use maintenance logs and incident reports as ground truth to tune your alpha, beta, and gamma coefficients in the scoring formula.

Security, Privacy, And Cost: Building Responsibly

As you scale automation, staying mindful of security and cost is essential. This template is designed with those concerns in mind, and you can extend it with your own policies.

  • Security & privacy
    • Encrypt personally identifiable information (PII)
    • Restrict access to the Supabase database
    • Store only aggregated summaries in the vector store if raw data is sensitive
  • Cost management
    • Rate-limit webhook and embedding calls to control external API costs
    • Monitor usage and set budgets for vector storage and model calls

With these safeguards in place, you can scale confidently without surprises.

Scaling Your Workflow To Production

Once the template is running smoothly on a small subset of devices, you can gradually scale it to cover more sources and higher volumes.

  • Batch embeddings for multiple chunks to reduce API overhead and improve throughput.
  • Shard vector stores by region or device class to lower latency and simplify scaling.
  • Use asynchronous alert channels such as queues or pub/sub when many anomalies may trigger at once.
  • Persist raw time-series in a dedicated time-series database (InfluxDB, TimescaleDB) while keeping the vector store lean and focused on embeddings.

This approach lets you grow from a proof-of-concept to a production-grade anomaly detection system without rewriting your entire stack.

A Real-World Example: From Anomaly To Action

Imagine a manufacturing plant streaming minute-level power readings from a key device. A 60-minute window is created, chunked, and embedded using the workflow.

The new window’s vector is compared against its ten nearest historical neighbors. The average distance turns out to be three times the historical mean distance for that device and hour. The Agent node recognizes this as unusual, marks the window as anomalous, and writes a detailed entry to Google Sheets.

The log includes:

  • device_id
  • Relevant timestamps
  • Anomaly score and contributing factors
  • Suggested next steps, such as inspecting HVAC or checking recent maintenance

The operations team receives an alert, investigates, and resolves the root cause faster than they could have with manual monitoring alone. Over time, these small wins compound into significant savings and more reliable operations.

Taking The Next Step: Make This Template Your Own

This n8n workflow is more than a template. It is a starting point for a more automated, insight-driven way of managing energy consumption. You can begin with the default configuration, then iterate as you learn from your data.

To get started:

  • Import the Energy Consumption Anomaly Detector template into your n8n instance.
  • Configure your Hugging Face and Supabase credentials in the n8n credentials manager.
  • Adjust chunkSize, thresholds, and neighbor counts to match your data cadence and noise level.

As you gain confidence, experiment with new scoring strategies, additional metadata, or different notification channels. Each adjustment is a step toward an automation system that reflects your unique environment and goals.

If you need help tailoring the pipeline to your setup, you can reach out for implementation support or request a walkthrough. You do not have to build everything alone.

Ready to deploy? Export the workflow, plug in your credentials, and run a few historical replays. Validate the detector, refine your thresholds, and when you are comfortable, route alerts to your operations team.

Edge Device Log Compressor with n8n

Edge Device Log Compressor with n8n: A Step-by-Step Teaching Guide

What You Will Learn

In this guide, you will learn how to use an n8n workflow template to:

  • Ingest logs from edge devices securely using a Webhook
  • Split large log payloads into smaller, meaningful text chunks
  • Convert those chunks into vector embeddings for semantic search
  • Store embeddings and metadata in a Redis vector database
  • Query logs using an AI agent that uses memory and tools
  • Summarize or compress logs and save the results into Google Sheets
  • Apply best practices around configuration, security, and cost

This is the same core architecture as the original template, but explained in a more instructional, step-by-step way so you can understand and adapt it for your own edge device environment.

Why Compress Edge Device Logs?

Edge devices generate continuous streams of data: telemetry, error traces, health checks, and application-specific events. Keeping all raw logs in a central system is often:

  • Expensive to store and back up
  • Slow to search and filter in real time
  • Hard to interpret because of noise and repetition

The n8n Edge Device Log Compressor template focuses on semantic compression rather than simple file compression. Instead of just shrinking file sizes, it turns verbose logs into compact, meaningful representations that are easier to search, summarize, and analyze.

Key benefits of compressing logs in this way include:

  • Lower storage and transfer costs by storing compressed summaries and embeddings instead of full raw logs everywhere
  • Faster incident triage using semantic search to find relevant events by meaning, not just keywords
  • Automated summarization and anomaly detection with an AI agent that can read and interpret log context
  • Better indexing for long-term analytics by keeping structured metadata and embeddings for trend analysis

Conceptual Overview: How the n8n Architecture Works

The template implements a full pipeline inside n8n. At a high level, the workflow:

  1. Receives logs from edge devices via a secured Webhook
  2. Splits large log payloads into overlapping chunks
  3. Creates vector embeddings for each chunk using an embeddings model such as Cohere
  4. Stores embeddings and metadata in a Redis vector store
  5. Lets a user or system send a query that performs vector search on those embeddings
  6. Uses an AI agent with memory and tools to summarize or act on the retrieved logs
  7. Appends the final summarized output to Google Sheets for review or auditing

Core Components of the Workflow

Each component in the n8n template plays a specific role:

  • Webhook – Entry point that receives HTTP POST requests from edge devices.
  • Splitter – Splits large log text into smaller chunks using configurable chunk size and overlap.
  • Embeddings (Cohere or similar) – Turns each text chunk into a vector embedding that captures semantic meaning.
  • Insert (Redis Vector Store) – Stores the embeddings and metadata in a Redis index for fast similarity search.
  • Query + Tool – Performs vector search against Redis and exposes the results as a tool to the AI agent.
  • Memory + Chat (Anthropic or other LLM) – Maintains context across multiple queries and responses.
  • Agent – Orchestrates the LLM, tools, and memory to answer questions, summarize logs, or recommend actions.
  • Google Sheets – Final destination for human-readable summaries, severity ratings, and references to raw logs.

Understanding the Data Flow Step by Step

Let us walk through the full lifecycle of a log entry in this n8n workflow, from ingestion to summarized output.

Step 1 – Edge Device Sends Logs to the Webhook

Edge devices send their logs to an HTTP endpoint exposed by the n8n Webhook node. The endpoint usually accepts JSON payloads and should be protected with secure transport and authentication.

Security options for the Webhook:

  • Use HTTPS to encrypt data in transit
  • Require an API key in headers or query parameters
  • Optionally use mutual TLS (mTLS) for stronger authentication

Example Incoming Payload

An example POST request to /webhook might look like this:

{  "device_id": "edge-123",  "timestamp": "2025-08-31T12:00:00Z",  "logs": "Error: sensor timeout\nReading: 123\n..."
}

Step 2 – Splitter Node Breaks Logs into Chunks

Raw log payloads can be quite large. To make them manageable for embeddings and vector search, the Splitter node divides the log text into smaller, overlapping segments.

The key settings are:

  • chunkSize – The maximum length of each chunk in characters.
  • chunkOverlap – The number of characters that overlap between consecutive chunks.

For example, you might start with:

  • chunkSize: 300 to 600 characters (shorter if logs are noisy or very repetitive)
  • chunkOverlap: 10 to 50 characters to keep context between chunks

This overlapping strategy ensures that important details at chunk boundaries are not lost. In the example payload above, the Splitter might create 3 to 5 overlapping chunks from the original log string.

Step 3 – Embeddings Node Converts Chunks to Vectors

Once the logs are split, each chunk is sent to an Embeddings node. This node calls an embeddings provider such as Cohere to convert each text chunk into a fixed-length numeric vector.

These vectors encode the semantic meaning of the text, which makes it possible to search by similarity rather than by exact keyword match.

When configuring embeddings, consider:

  • Model choice – Cohere is a solid default, but OpenAI and other providers are also options.
  • Dimensionality – Higher dimensional embeddings can capture more nuance but require more storage and compute.

Step 4 – Redis Vector Store Persists Vectors and Metadata

The resulting embeddings are then stored in a Redis vector store. This is typically implemented using Redis modules such as Redisearch or Redis Vector Similarity.

For each chunk, the workflow stores:

  • The embedding vector
  • Metadata such as:
    • device ID
    • timestamp
    • severity (if available)
    • a reference or link to the original raw log

Configuration tips for Redis:

  • Use a Redis cluster or managed Redis with Redisearch for better performance and reliability.
  • Store rich metadata so you can filter queries by device, time range, or severity.
  • Plan for retention and archiving by compacting old vectors or moving them to cold storage when they are no longer queried frequently.

Step 5 – Query and Tool Nodes Perform Semantic Search

Later, when you or a monitoring system needs to investigate an issue, you send a query into the workflow. The Query node performs a similarity search on the Redis vector store to find the most relevant log chunks.

The Tool wrapper then exposes this vector search capability to the AI agent. In practice, this means the agent can:

  • Call the tool with a natural language question
  • Receive back the top matching log chunks and metadata
  • Use those results as context for reasoning and summarization

Example Query

For the earlier payload, a user might ask:

Why did edge-123 report sensor timeout last week?

The Query node will retrieve the most relevant chunks related to edge-123 and sensor timeouts around the requested time window.

Step 6 – AI Agent Uses Memory and Tools to Summarize or Act

Once the relevant chunks are retrieved, an Agent node orchestrates the AI model, tools, and memory.

In this template, the agent typically uses an LLM such as Anthropic via a Chat node, plus a memory buffer that keeps track of recent messages and context. The agent can then:

  • Summarize the root cause of an incident
  • Highlight key errors, patterns, or anomalies
  • Suggest remediation steps or link to runbooks

Memory configuration tips:

  • Use a windowed memory buffer so only the most recent context is kept.
  • Limit memory size to control API costs and keep responses focused.

Step 7 – Google Sheets Stores Summaries and Audit Data

Finally, the workflow writes the agent’s output to a Google Sheets spreadsheet. Each row might include:

  • A human-readable summary of the log events
  • A severity level or classification
  • The device ID and timestamp
  • A link or reference back to the raw log or observability system

This makes it easy for SRE teams, auditors, or analysts to review incidents without digging through raw logs.

Configuring Key Parts of the Template

Configuring the Splitter Node

The Splitter is one of the most important nodes for balancing performance, cost, and quality of results.

  • chunkSize:
    • Start with 300 to 600 characters.
    • Use smaller chunks for very noisy logs so each chunk captures a clearer event.
  • chunkOverlap:
    • Use 10 to 50 characters of overlap.
    • More overlap preserves context across chunks but increases the number of embeddings you store.

Choosing and Tuning Embeddings

For embeddings, you can use Cohere or an alternative provider. When choosing a model:

  • Balance cost against semantic quality.
  • Check the embedding dimensionality and make sure your Redis index is sized appropriately.
  • Consider batching multiple chunks into a single embedding request to reduce API overhead.

Optimizing the Redis Vector Store

To keep Redis efficient and scalable:

  • Use a clustered or managed Redis deployment with Redisearch support.
  • Store metadata fields like:
    • device_id
    • timestamp
    • severity
  • Implement retention policies for old vectors, such as:
    • Archiving older embeddings to object storage
    • Deleting or compacting low-value historical data

Agent, Memory, and Cost Control

The AI agent is powerful but can be expensive if not tuned correctly. To manage this:

  • Keep the memory window small and relevant to the current analysis.
  • Use concise prompts that focus on specific questions or tasks.
  • Limit the number of tool calls per query where possible.

Security and Compliance Best Practices

Since logs may contain sensitive information, treat them carefully throughout the pipeline.

  • Secure the Webhook
    • Always use HTTPS.
    • Protect the endpoint with API keys or mTLS.
  • Encrypt data at rest
    • Encrypt sensitive metadata in Redis.
    • Encrypt Google Sheets or restrict access using proper IAM controls.
  • Sanitize logs for PII
    • Remove or mask personally identifiable information before creating embeddings if required by policy.
  • Retention policies
    • Limit how long you keep raw logs.
    • Store compressed summaries and embeddings for longer-term analysis instead.

Use Cases and Practical Benefits

This n8n template is useful in several real-world scenarios:

  • Real-time incident triage
    • Engineers can query semantic logs to quickly identify root causes.
  • Long-term analytics
    • Compressed summaries and metadata can be analyzed to detect trends and recurring issues.
  • Automated alert enrichment
    • The AI agent can enrich alerts with contextual summaries and recommended runbooks.

Monitoring, Scaling, and Cost Management

To keep your deployment efficient and cost effective, monitor:

  • Embedding request volume
    • This is often a primary cost driver.
    • Use batching where possible to reduce per-request overhead.
  • Redis storage usage
    • Track how many vectors you store and how quickly the dataset grows.
    • Shard or archive old vectors to cheaper storage if you need long-term semantic search.

Hands-On: Getting Started with the Template

To try the Edge Device Log Compressor workflow in your own environment, follow these practical steps:

  1. Clone the n8n workflow template
    • Use the provided template link to import the workflow into your n8n instance.
  2. Configure credentials
    • Set up API keys and connections for:
      • Cohere (or your embeddings provider)
      • Redis (vector store)
      • Anthropic or your chosen LLM
      • Google Sheets
  3. Test with sample edge payloads
    • Send sample JSON logs from your edge devices or test tools.
    • Tune chunkSize and chunkOverlap based on log structure and performance.
  4. Set up retention, alerting, and access control
    • Define how long you keep raw logs and embeddings.
    • Configure alerts for high error rates or anomalies.
    • Ensure only authorized users can access logs and summaries.

Automating Drone Crop Health with n8n & LangChain

Automating Drone Image Crop Health With n8n & LangChain

Modern precision agriculture increasingly relies on automated AI pipelines to transform drone imagery into operational decisions. This article presents a production-grade workflow template built on n8n that coordinates drone image ingestion, text processing with LangChain, OpenAI embeddings, Supabase as a vector database, an Anthropic-powered agent, and Google Sheets for logging and reporting.

The goal is to provide automation engineers and agritech practitioners with a robust reference architecture that is modular, scalable, and explainable, while remaining practical to deploy in real-world environments.

Business case: Why automate drone-based crop health analysis?

Manual inspection of drone imagery is labor intensive, difficult to scale, and prone to inconsistent assessments between agronomists. An automated workflow offers several advantages:

  • Faster detection of crop stress, disease, or nutrient deficiencies
  • Standardized, repeatable evaluation criteria across fields and teams
  • Reduced manual data handling so agronomists can focus on interventions
  • Traceable recommendations with clear context and audit logs

The n8n workflow template described here is designed to support these objectives by combining vector search, LLM-based reasoning, and structured logging into a single, orchestrated pipeline.

Pipeline architecture and data flow

The end-to-end architecture can be summarized as:

Webhook → Text Splitter → OpenAI Embeddings → Supabase Vector Store → LangChain Agent (Anthropic) → Google Sheets

At a high level, the pipeline executes the following steps:

  • A drone system or upstream ingestion service sends image metadata and analysis notes to an n8n Webhook.
  • Relevant text (captions, OCR results, or metadata) is segmented into chunks optimized for embedding.
  • Each chunk is converted into a vector representation using OpenAI embeddings.
  • Vectors, along with associated metadata, are stored in a Supabase vector index for retrieval.
  • When an agronomist or downstream system submits a query, the workflow retrieves the most similar records from Supabase.
  • An Anthropic-based LangChain agent uses these retrieved contexts to generate structured recommendations.
  • The agent’s outputs are appended to Google Sheets for monitoring, reporting, and integration with other tools.

This design separates ingestion, indexing, retrieval, and reasoning into clear stages, which simplifies debugging and makes it easier to scale or swap components over time.

Core n8n components and integrations

Webhook: Entry point for drone imagery events

The workflow begins with an n8n Webhook node that exposes a POST endpoint. Drone platforms or intermediate services submit JSON payloads containing image details and any preliminary analysis. A typical payload might look like:

{  "image_url": "https://s3.example.com/drone/field123/image_2025-08-01.jpg",  "coords": {"lat": 40.12, "lon": -88.23},  "timestamp": "2025-08-01T10:12:00Z",  "notes": "NDVI low in northeast quadrant"
}

Fields such as image_url, coordinates, timestamp, and NDVI-related notes are preserved as metadata and passed downstream through the workflow.

Text Splitter: Preparing content for embeddings

Before generating embeddings, the workflow uses a text splitter node to partition long descriptions, OCR output, or combined metadata into manageable segments.

In the template, the splitter is configured with:

  • chunkSize = 400
  • chunkOverlap = 40

These defaults work well for short to medium-length metadata and notes. For deployments with very long OCR transcripts (for example, more than 2000 characters), you can reduce chunkOverlap to control token usage, while ensuring that each chunk still contains enough context for the model to interpret correctly.

OpenAI Embeddings: Vectorizing agronomic context

The Embeddings node uses OpenAI to convert text chunks into dense vector embeddings. The template assumes an OpenAI embeddings model such as text-embedding-3-large, authenticated via your OpenAI API key.

Recommended practices when configuring this node:

  • Batch multiple chunks in a single call where possible to improve throughput for high-volume ingestion.
  • Attach metadata such as image_url, coords, timestamp, and NDVI-related attributes to each vector record.
  • Monitor embedding usage and costs, especially for large drone fleets or frequent flights.

By persisting rich metadata with each vector, you enable more powerful downstream filtering, mapping, and analysis.

Supabase Vector Store: Persistent similarity search

Supabase, backed by Postgres with vector extensions, serves as the vector store for this workflow. The n8n template uses two primary operations:

  • Insert: Store newly generated vectors with an index name such as drone_image_crop_health.
  • Query: Retrieve the top-K nearest neighbors for a given query embedding.

When inserting vectors, configure the table or index to include fields like:

  • image_url
  • coords (latitude and longitude)
  • timestamp
  • ndvi and other multispectral indices
  • crop_type

At query time, the workflow retrieves the most relevant records, including all associated metadata, and passes them to the agent as context. This enables the agent to reference the original imagery, geographical location, and agronomic indicators when generating recommendations.

Tool Node and Memory: Connecting LangChain to the vector store

The template uses a Tool node to expose Supabase retrieval as a tool within the LangChain agent. This allows the agent to perform vector similarity search as part of its reasoning process.

A Memory node is also configured to maintain short-term conversational context or recent workflow state. This combination enables the agent to:

  • Reference the current query along with recently retrieved results
  • Preserve continuity across multiple related queries
  • Leverage the vector store as a structured, queryable knowledge base

Anthropic Chat & LangChain Agent: Reasoning and recommendations

The reasoning layer is implemented as a LangChain agent backed by an Anthropic chat model (or another compatible LLM). The agent receives:

  • The user or system query (for example, an agronomist asking about specific conditions)
  • Retrieved contexts from Supabase, including metadata and any NDVI or crop health indicators
  • A structured prompt template and response schema

You can tailor the agent’s instructions to focus on tasks such as:

  • Identifying potential disease, pest pressure, or nutrient deficiencies in the retrieved images
  • Assigning urgency levels such as immediate, monitor, or low priority
  • Producing concise intervention steps for field teams

For production deployments, keep prompts deterministic and constrained. Explicit response schemas and clear instructions significantly improve reliability and simplify downstream parsing.

Google Sheets: Logging, auditing, and reporting

The final stage of the workflow uses the Google Sheets node to append the agent’s structured outputs to a designated sheet. Typical columns include:

  • Image URL
  • Coordinates
  • NDVI or other indices
  • Agent-detected issue or risk
  • Urgency or alert level
  • Recommended action
  • Timestamp

Storing results in Sheets provides a quick, non-technical interface for stakeholders and a simple integration point for BI tools or alerting systems.

Step-by-step implementation guide

Prerequisites

  • An n8n instance (cloud-hosted or self-hosted)
  • OpenAI API key for embeddings
  • Supabase project with the vector extension configured
  • Anthropic API key (or an alternative LLM provider supported by LangChain)
  • A Google account with access to the target Google Sheet

1. Set up the Webhook endpoint

  • Create a Webhook node in n8n.
  • Configure the HTTP method as POST and define a path that your drone ingestion system will call.
  • If the endpoint is exposed publicly, secure it with mechanisms such as HMAC signatures, secret tokens, or an API key field in the payload.

2. Configure the text splitter

  • Add a text splitter node after the Webhook.
  • Set chunkSize to approximately 400 characters and chunkOverlap to around 40 for typical metadata and short notes.
  • For very long OCR outputs, experiment with lower overlap values to reduce token usage while preserving semantic continuity.

3. Connect and tune the embeddings node

  • Insert an OpenAI Embeddings node after the text splitter.
  • Select a suitable embeddings model, such as text-embedding-3-large.
  • Map the text chunks from the splitter into the embeddings input.
  • Include fields such as image_url, coords, timestamp, ndvi, and crop_type as metadata for each embedding.

4. Insert vectors into Supabase

  • Add a Supabase node configured for vector insert operations.
  • Specify an indexName such as drone_image_crop_health.
  • Ensure that the Supabase table includes columns for vector data and all relevant metadata fields.
  • Test inserts with a small batch of records before scaling up ingestion.

5. Implement query and agent orchestration

  • For query workflows, add a Supabase node configured to perform vector similarity search (top-K retrieval) based on an input query.
  • Feed the retrieved items into the LangChain agent node, along with a structured prompt template.
  • Design the prompt to include:
    • A concise system instruction
    • The retrieved contexts
    • A clear response schema, typically JSON, with fields such as alert_level, recommended_action, and confidence_score
  • Use the Tool node to expose Supabase as a retriever tool, and the Memory node to maintain short-term context if multi-turn interactions are required.

6. Configure logging and monitoring

  • Attach a Google Sheets node to append each agent response as a new row.
  • Log both the raw webhook payloads and the final recommendations for traceability.
  • Track throughput, latency, and error rates in n8n to identify bottlenecks.
  • Schedule periodic re-indexing if metadata is updated or corrected after initial ingestion.

Operational best practices

  • Attach visual context: Include image thumbnails or low-resolution previews in metadata to support quick manual verification of the agent’s conclusions.
  • Use numeric fields for indices: Store NDVI and multispectral indices as numeric columns in Supabase to enable structured filtering and analytics.
  • Secure access: Apply role-based access control (RBAC) to your n8n instance and Supabase project to minimize unauthorized access to field data.
  • Harden prompts: Test prompts extensively in a sandbox environment. Enforce strict response schemas to avoid ambiguous or unstructured outputs.
  • Cost management: Monitor spending across embeddings, LLM calls, and storage. Adjust chunk sizes and retrieval K values to balance performance, accuracy, and cost.

Example agent prompt template

The following template illustrates a structured prompt for the LangChain agent:

System: You are an agronomy assistant. Analyze the following retrieved contexts from drone imagery and provide a JSON response.
User: Retrieved contexts: {{retrieved_items}}
Task: Identify likely issues, urgency level (immediate / monitor / low), and one recommended action.
Response schema: {"issue":"", "urgency":"", "confidence":0-1, "action":""}

By enforcing a predictable JSON schema, you simplify downstream parsing in n8n and ensure that outputs can be reliably stored, filtered, and used by other systems.

Conclusion and next steps

This n8n and LangChain workflow template demonstrates a practical approach to automating drone-based crop health analysis. It integrates ingestion, embedding, vector search, LLM reasoning, and logging into a cohesive pipeline that can be adapted to different crops, geographies, and operational constraints.

To adopt this pattern in your environment:

  • Start with a small pilot deployment on a limited set of fields.
  • Iterate on chunk sizes, retrieval K values, and prompt design to optimize accuracy.
  • Once the workflow is stable, extend it with automated alerts (email or SMS), integration with farm management systems, or a geospatial dashboard that highlights hotspots on a map.

Call-to-action: If you want a ready-to-deploy n8n template or guidance on adapting this pipeline to your own drone imagery and agronomic workflows, reach out to our team or download the starter workflow to access a 30-day trial with assisted setup and tuning.


Published: 2025. Designed for agritech engineers, data scientists, and farm operations leaders implementing drone-based automation.

Build a Drink Water Reminder with n8n & LangChain

Build a Drink Water Reminder with n8n & LangChain

On a Tuesday afternoon, Mia stared at her screen and rubbed her temples. As the marketing lead for a fully remote team, she spent hours in back-to-back calls, writing campaigns, and answering Slack messages. By 4 p.m., she would realize she had barely moved and had forgotten to drink water again.

Her team was no different. Burnout, headaches, and fatigue were creeping in. Everyone agreed they needed healthier habits, but no one had the time or mental bandwidth to track something as simple as water intake.

So Mia decided to do what any automation-minded marketer would do: build a smart, context-aware “Drink Water Reminder” workflow using n8n, LangChain, OpenAI, Supabase, Google Sheets, and Slack.

The problem: reminders that feel spammy, not supportive

Mia had tried basic reminder apps before. They pinged people every hour, regardless of timezone, schedule, or workload. Her team quickly muted them.

What she really needed was a system that:

  • Understood user preferences and schedules
  • Could remember past interactions and adjust over time
  • Logged everything for analytics and optimization
  • Alerted her if something broke
  • Was easy to scale without rewriting logic from scratch

While searching for a solution, Mia discovered an n8n workflow template built exactly for this use case: a drink water reminder powered by LangChain, OpenAI embeddings, Supabase vector storage, Google Sheets logging, and Slack alerts.

Instead of a rigid reminder bot, she could build a context-aware agent using Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) that actually “understood” the team’s habits and preferences.

Discovering the architecture behind the reminder

Before she customized anything, Mia explored how the template worked. The architecture was surprisingly elegant. At its core, the workflow used:

  • Webhook Trigger to receive external requests
  • Text Splitter to break long inputs into chunks
  • Embeddings (OpenAI) to convert text into vectors using text-embedding-3-small
  • Supabase Insert / Query to store and retrieve those embeddings in a vector index called drink_water_reminder
  • Vector Tool to expose that vector store to LangChain
  • Window Memory to keep short-term conversational context
  • Chat Model using OpenAI’s GPT-based chat completions
  • RAG Agent to orchestrate retrieval and generate personalized responses
  • Append Sheet to log every reminder in Google Sheets
  • Slack Alert to notify her team if anything failed

This was not just a “ping every hour” script. It was a small, intelligent system that could learn from previous messages and tailor its behavior over time.

Rising action: Mia starts building her reminder agent

Mia opened her n8n instance, imported the template, and started walking through each node. Her goal was simple: set up a robust, automated drink water reminder that her team would not hate.

1. Giving the workflow an entry point with Webhook Trigger

First, she configured the Webhook Trigger node. This would be the front door of the entire system, accepting POST requests from an external scheduler or other services.

She set the path to:

/drink-water-reminder

Each request would include a payload with fields like user_id, timezone, and any custom preferences her team wanted, such as preferred reminder frequency or working hours.

Now, whenever a scheduler hit that URL, the workflow would start.

2. Preparing content with the Text Splitter

Mia realized that some requests might contain longer instructions or context, not just a single line like “Remind me to drink water every hour.” To make sure the system could understand and store this information effectively, she turned to the Text Splitter node.

She configured it with character-based splitting using these settings:

chunkSize: 400
chunkOverlap: 40

This way, the content was broken into manageable chunks, with enough overlap to preserve meaning for semantic search. No chunk was too large to embed efficiently, and none lost important context.

3. Turning text into semantic memory with OpenAI embeddings

Next came the Embeddings (OpenAI) node. This is where the text chunks became vectors that the system could search and compare later.

She configured it to use the model:

text-embedding-3-small

After adding her OpenAI API credentials in n8n’s credential store, each chunk from the Text Splitter flowed into this node and came out as a vector representation, ready for storage in Supabase.

4. Storing context in Supabase: Insert node

To give the agent a long-term memory, Mia created a Supabase vector table and index named drink_water_reminder. This is where embeddings, along with helpful metadata, would live.

In the Supabase Insert node, she set the mode to insert and made sure each entry included:

  • user_id to tie data to a specific person
  • timestamp or created_at for tracking when it was stored
  • text containing the original chunk
  • Additional JSON metadata for any extra preferences

This structure would later allow the agent to retrieve relevant context, such as “Mia prefers reminders only between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m.”

5. Letting the agent “look things up” with Supabase Query and Vector Tool

Storing data is one thing. Using it intelligently is another. To make the agent capable of retrieving useful context, Mia configured the Supabase Query node to search the same drink_water_reminder index.

Then she added the Vector Tool node, which wrapped the Supabase vector store as a LangChain tool. This meant that when the RAG agent needed more information, it could call this tool and retrieve the most relevant entries.

In plain terms, the agent would not just guess. It would look up previous data and respond based on history.

6. Keeping conversations coherent with Window Memory

Mia wanted the system to handle follow-up prompts gracefully. For example, if a user said “Remind me every 2 hours” and then later added “But skip weekends,” the agent should understand that these messages belonged together.

To achieve this, she connected Window Memory to the RAG agent. This node buffers recent conversation pieces and provides short-lived context during a session. It does not store everything forever, but it helps the agent keep track of what just happened.

7. Giving the agent a voice: Chat Model and RAG Agent

Now it was time to define how the agent would actually respond.

Mia configured the Chat Model node to use OpenAI chat completions (GPT-based) and added her credentials. This model would generate natural language responses that felt friendly and helpful.

Then she moved to the heart of the system: the RAG Agent. This agent orchestrates three key elements:

  • Retrieval from the Vector Tool (long-term memory)
  • Short-term context from Window Memory
  • Generation of structured responses via the Chat Model

To define its behavior, she set a system message and prompt configuration like this:

systemMessage: "You are an assistant for Drink Water Reminder"
promptType: "define"
text: "Process the following data for task 'Drink Water Reminder':\n\n{{ $json }}"

This told the agent exactly what role it should play and how to treat the incoming data. The agent would then output structured status text, which could be logged and analyzed later.

8. Logging everything in Google Sheets with Append Sheet

As a marketer, Mia loved data. She wanted to know how often reminders were sent, how they performed, and whether the team was actually engaging with them.

To make this easy, she connected an Append Sheet node to a Google Sheet named Log. Each time the RAG agent produced an output, the workflow appended a new row with a Status column that captured the agent’s response.

She configured OAuth for Google Sheets in n8n, so credentials stayed secure and easy to manage.

9. Staying ahead of issues with Slack Alert

The final piece was resilience. Mia did not want a silent failure where reminders simply stopped working without anyone noticing.

She added a Slack Alert node and connected it to the RAG Agent’s onError path. Whenever the workflow encountered an error, a message would be posted to the #alerts channel in Slack.

This way, if Supabase, OpenAI, or Google Sheets had an issue, her team would know quickly and could respond.

Turning point: testing the drink water reminder in real life

With the architecture in place, it was time for the moment of truth. Mia ran a full test of the workflow.

Step 1: Sending a test POST request

She sent a POST request to her n8n webhook URL with a payload like:

{  "user_id": "mia",  "text": "Remind me to drink water every hour",  "timezone": "Europe/Berlin"
}

Step 2: Watching the nodes execute

In the n8n editor, she watched the execution flow:

  • The Webhook Trigger received the request
  • The Text Splitter broke the text into chunks
  • The Embeddings node generated vectors
  • The Supabase Insert node stored them in the drink_water_reminder index

No errors. So far, so good.

Step 3: Simulating a query and agent response

Next, she triggered a query flow to simulate the agent retrieving context for Mia’s reminders. The Supabase Query and Vector Tool located relevant entries, and the RAG Agent used them to generate a helpful message tailored to her preferences.

The response felt surprisingly personal, referencing her hourly preference and timezone.

Step 4: Verifying logs and alerts

Finally, she checked the Google Sheet. A new row had been added to the Log sheet, with the agent’s output neatly stored in the Status column.

She also confirmed that if she forced an error (for example, by temporarily misconfiguring a node), the Slack Alert fired correctly and posted a message to #alerts.

The system was working end-to-end.

Behind the scenes: practical tips Mia followed

To keep the workflow secure, scalable, and cost-effective, Mia applied a few best practices while setting everything up.

Securing credentials and schema design

  • Secure credentials: All OpenAI, Supabase, Google Sheets, and Slack credentials were stored in n8n’s credential store. She never hardcoded API keys in the workflow.
  • Schema design in Supabase: Her vector table included fields like user_id, text, created_at, and a JSON metadata column. This made search results more actionable and easier to filter.

Managing costs, retries, and monitoring

  • Rate limits and costs: Since embeddings and chat completions incur costs, she kept chunk sizes reasonable and batched writes where possible.
  • Idempotency: To guard against duplicate inserts when schedulers retried the webhook, she implemented idempotency keys on the incoming requests.
  • Monitoring: She enabled execution logs in n8n and relied on Slack alerts to catch failed runs or sudden spikes in error rates.

Expanding the vision: future use cases and enhancements

Once the basic reminder system was live, Mia started imagining how far she could take it.

  • Personalized cadence: Adjust reminder frequency based on each user’s history in Supabase, such as sending fewer reminders if they consistently acknowledge them.
  • Multi-channel reminders: Extend the workflow to send messages via email, SMS, Slack DM, or push notifications, depending on user preference.
  • Analytics dashboard: Build a dashboard on top of the Google Sheets data or Supabase to visualize how often reminders are sent, accepted, or ignored.
  • Smart nudges: Introduce escalation logic that only increases reminders when users repeatedly ignore them, making the system helpful instead of nagging.

Keeping data safe: security and privacy considerations

Mia knew that even something as simple as a water reminder could include personal details like schedules and habits. She took extra care to protect her team’s data.

She made sure to:

  • Minimize stored personal data to what was truly necessary
  • Enforce row-level security in Supabase so users could only access their own records
  • Rotate API keys regularly and avoid exposing them in logs or code

If the system ever expanded to include more health-related data, she planned to review applicable privacy laws and adjust accordingly.

When things go wrong: Mia’s troubleshooting checklist

To make future debugging easier, Mia documented a quick troubleshooting list for herself and her team.

  • Webhook returns 404: Confirm the path is correct and deployed, for example /webhook/drink-water-reminder in n8n.
  • Embeddings fail: Check that the OpenAI key is valid and the model name is correctly set to text-embedding-3-small.
  • Supabase insert/query errors: Verify the table schema, ensure the vector extension is enabled, and confirm the index name drink_water_reminder.
  • RAG Agent output is poorly formatted: Refine the systemMessage and prompt template so the agent consistently returns structured output.

Resolution: a small habit, a big impact

A few weeks after deploying the workflow, Mia noticed a quiet shift in her team. People started joking in Slack about “their water bot,” but they also reported fewer headaches and more energy in afternoon meetings.

The reminders felt personal, not spammy. The system respected timezones, remembered preferences, and adapted over time. And when something broke, the Slack alerts let her fix it before anyone complained.

Under the hood, it was all powered by n8n, LangChain, OpenAI embeddings, Supabase vector storage, Google Sheets logging, and Slack alerts. On the surface, it was just a friendly nudge to drink water.

For Mia, it proved a bigger point: with the right automation and a bit of semantic intelligence, even the smallest habits can be supported at scale.

Ready to build your own drink water reminder?

If you want to create a similar experience for your team, you do not need to start from scratch. This n8n + LangChain template gives you a robust foundation for context-aware reminders that feel genuinely helpful.

  • Use embeddings and vector search to store and retrieve user context
  • Leverage Window Memory and a RAG agent for smarter, personalized responses
  • Log everything to Google Sheets for analytics and optimization
  • Wire Slack alerts so you never miss a failure

Next steps: Deploy the workflow in your n8n instance, connect your credentials, and run a few test requests. Then iterate on the prompts, channels, and cadence to match your users.

Call to action: Try this template today in your n8n environment and share the results with your team. If you need help customizing it, reach out to a

Build an Achievement Suggestion Engine with n8n

Build an Achievement Suggestion Engine with n8n, LangChain and Supabase

This guide documents an n8n workflow template that implements an Achievement Suggestion Engine using text embeddings, a Supabase vector store, and an agent-style orchestration with LangChain and a Hugging Face model. It explains the workflow architecture, node configuration, data flow, and practical considerations for running the template in production-like environments.

1. Conceptual Overview

The Achievement Suggestion Engine transforms raw user content into personalized achievement recommendations. It combines semantic search with agent logic so that your application can:

  • Convert user text (profiles, activity logs, goals) into dense vector embeddings for semantic similarity search
  • Persist those vectors in a Supabase-backed vector store for fast nearest-neighbor queries
  • Use a LangChain-style agent with a Hugging Face LLM to interpret retrieved context and generate achievement suggestions
  • Log outputs to Google Sheets for monitoring, analytics, and auditability

The n8n workflow is structured into two primary flows:

  • Ingest (write path) – receives user content, chunks it, embeds it, and stores it in Supabase
  • Query (read path) – retrieves relevant content from Supabase, feeds it into an agent, and generates suggestions that are logged and optionally returned to the caller

2. High-level Architecture

At a high level, the template uses the following components:

  • Webhook node to accept incoming HTTP POST requests from your application
  • Text splitter to perform chunking of long documents
  • Embeddings node (Hugging Face) to convert text chunks into vectors
  • Supabase vector store to store and query embeddings (index name: achievement_suggestion_engine)
  • Vector search + tool node to expose Supabase search as a tool to the agent
  • Conversation memory buffer to keep recent interaction context
  • Chat / Agent node using a Hugging Face LLM and LangChain agent logic
  • Google Sheets node to append suggestion logs for analytics and review

The ingest and query flows can be triggered from the same webhook or separated logically, depending on how you configure routing at the application layer.

3. Data Flow: Ingest vs Query

3.1 Ingest Flow (Write Path)

The ingest flow is responsible for turning user content into searchable vectors.

  1. The Webhook node receives a POST payload containing user content such as a profile, activity feed, or event description.
  2. The payload is passed to the Splitter node, which chunks the text into segments suitable for embedding.
  3. Each chunk is processed by the Embeddings node (Hugging Face) to generate vector representations.
  4. The Insert operation writes the resulting vectors into the Supabase vector store, using the index achievement_suggestion_engine and attaching relevant metadata (for example user ID, timestamps, and source identifiers).

3.2 Query Flow (Read Path)

The query flow retrieves the most relevant stored content and uses it to generate achievement suggestions.

  1. A user request or event triggers a Query operation against Supabase, which performs a semantic similarity search over the stored embeddings.
  2. The Tool node wraps the vector search capability as a LangChain-compatible tool so it can be invoked by the agent.
  3. The Agent node uses the tool results, conversation memory, and a configured prompt to generate personalized achievement suggestions.
  4. The final suggestions are sent to a Google Sheets node, which appends a new row with user identifiers, timestamps, and the generated output. The same response can be returned from n8n to the caller if desired.

4. Node-by-node Breakdown

4.1 Webhook Node (Ingress)

The Webhook node is the entry point for both ingestion and query operations. It listens for HTTP POST requests from your application.

  • Trigger type: HTTP Webhook
  • Supported method: POST
  • Payload: JSON body containing fields such as user_id, timestamp, and content (see sample below)

You can use a single webhook and route based on payload fields (for example, a mode flag), or maintain separate workflows for ingest and query paths. In all cases, validating the payload format and returning appropriate HTTP status codes helps prevent downstream errors.

4.2 Splitter Node (Text Chunking)

The Splitter node receives the raw text content and breaks it into smaller segments for embeddings. This improves retrieval quality and prevents hitting model token limits.

  • Key parameters:
    • chunkSize: 400 – maximum characters per chunk
    • chunkOverlap: 40 – number of overlapping characters between consecutive chunks

The template uses 400/40 as a balanced default. It preserves enough context for semantic meaning while keeping the number of embeddings manageable. Overlap of around 10 percent helps maintain continuity across chunk boundaries without excessive duplication.

Edge case to consider: very short inputs that are smaller than chunkSize will not be split further and are passed as a single chunk, which is typically acceptable.

4.3 Embeddings Node (Hugging Face)

The Embeddings node converts each text chunk into a dense vector using a Hugging Face model.

  • Provider: Hugging Face
  • Typical model type: sentence-level embedding models such as sentence-transformers families (exact model is selected in your credentials/config)
  • Input: text chunks from the Splitter node
  • Output: numeric vectors suitable for insertion into a vector store

When choosing a model, balance accuracy against latency and resource usage. Before promoting to production, evaluate semantic recall and precision on a representative dataset.

4.4 Insert Node (Supabase Vector Store)

The Insert node writes embeddings into Supabase, which acts as the vector store.

  • Index name: achievement_suggestion_engine
  • Backend: Supabase (Postgres with vector extension)
  • Operation: insert embeddings and associated metadata

Alongside the vector itself, you should store structured metadata, such as:

  • user_id for tenant-level filtering
  • timestamp to support time-based analysis or cleanup
  • chunk_index to reconstruct document order if needed
  • Source identifiers (for example document ID or event type)

This metadata is important for downstream filtering, debugging, and audits. It also enables more granular queries, such as restricting search to a single user or time range.

4.5 Query + Tool Nodes (Vector Search + Agent Tool)

On the read path, the workflow performs a vector search in Supabase and exposes the results as a tool to the agent.

  • Query node:
    • Accepts a query embedding or text that is converted to an embedding
    • Performs nearest-neighbor search against the achievement_suggestion_engine index
    • Returns the most similar chunks along with their metadata
  • Tool node:
    • Wraps the vector search capability as a LangChain-style tool
    • Makes retrieval callable by the agent as needed during reasoning

The agent uses this tool to fetch context dynamically instead of relying solely on the initial prompt. This pattern is particularly useful when the underlying vector store grows large.

4.6 Memory Node (Conversation Buffer)

The Memory node maintains a sliding window of recent conversation turns. This allows the agent to keep track of previous suggestions, user feedback, or clarifications.

  • Type: conversation buffer
  • Key parameter: memoryBufferWindow which controls how many recent messages are retained

A larger window provides richer context but increases token usage for each agent call. Tune this value based on the typical length of your user interactions and cost constraints.

4.7 Chat / Agent Node (Hugging Face LLM + LangChain Agent)

The Chat / Agent node orchestrates the LLM, tools, and memory to generate achievement suggestions.

  • LLM provider: Hugging Face
  • Agent framework: LangChain-style agent within n8n
  • Inputs:
    • Retrieved context from the vector store tool
    • Conversation history from the memory buffer
    • System and user prompts defining the task and constraints
  • Output: structured or formatted achievement suggestions

The prompt typically instructs the agent to:

  • Analyze user behavior and goals extracted from context
  • Map these to a set of potential achievements
  • Prioritize or rank suggestions
  • Format the response in a predictable structure such as JSON or CSV

You should also include fallback instructions for cases where the context is weak or no strong matches are found, for example instructing the agent to respond with a default message or an empty list.

4.8 Google Sheets Node (Logging)

The final step logs the agent output to Google Sheets for inspection and analytics.

  • Operation: append rows to a specified sheet
  • Typical fields:
    • User identifiers
    • Timestamp of the request or suggestion generation
    • Raw or formatted achievement suggestions

This approach is convenient for early-stage experimentation and manual review. For higher throughput or stricter consistency requirements, you may later replace or complement Sheets with a transactional database.

5. Configuration Notes & Best Practices

5.1 Chunking Strategy

Chunking has a direct impact on retrieval quality and cost.

  • Chunk size:
    • Larger chunks preserve more context but increase embedding cost and may dilute the signal for specific queries.
    • Smaller chunks improve granularity but can lose cross-sentence context.
  • Overlap:
    • Overlap helps maintain continuity between chunks when sentences span boundaries.
    • About 10 percent overlap, as used in the template, is a strong starting point.

Test with your own data to determine whether to adjust chunkSize or chunkOverlap for optimal recall.

5.2 Selecting an Embeddings Model

For best results, use a model designed for semantic similarity:

  • Prefer sentence-level encoders such as those in the sentence-transformers family or similar Hugging Face models.
  • Evaluate performance on a small labeled set of queries and documents to confirm that similar items cluster as expected.
  • Consider latency and throughput, especially if your ingest volume or query rate is high.

5.3 Designing the Supabase Vector Store

Supabase provides a managed Postgres instance with a vector extension, which is used as the vector store in this template.

  • Use the achievement_suggestion_engine index for all embeddings related to the engine.
  • Include metadata fields such as:
    • user_id for multi-tenant isolation
    • source_id or document ID for traceability
    • timestamp to support time-based retention and analysis
    • chunk_index to reconstruct original ordering if needed

This metadata makes it easier to filter search results, enforce access control, and debug unexpected suggestions.

5.4 Agent Prompting and Safety

Well-structured prompts are critical for consistent and safe suggestions.

  • Clearly define the task, such as:
    • Suggest up to 5 achievements based on the context and user goals.
  • Specify a strict output format, for example JSON or CSV, so that downstream systems can parse responses reliably.
  • Provide guidelines for low-context scenarios, such as:
    • Return a minimal default suggestion set.
    • Explicitly state when there is insufficient information to make recommendations.

Incorporating these constraints helps reduce hallucinations and ensures that the agent behaves predictably under edge cases.

5.5 Logging & Observability

The template uses Google Sheets as a simple logging backend:

  • Append each agent output as a new row, including identifiers and timestamps.
  • Use the sheet to monitor suggestion quality, identify anomalies, and iterate on prompts.

For production environments, consider:

  • Forwarding logs to a dedicated database or observability platform.
  • Storing raw requests, responses, and vector IDs to support traceability and debugging.
  • Monitoring error rates and latency for each node in the workflow.

6. Security, Privacy, and Cost Considerations

Handling user content in an AI pipeline requires careful attention to security and cost.

  • Security & access control:
    • Encrypt data in transit with HTTPS and ensure data at rest is protected.
    • Use Supabase row-level security or policies to restrict access to user-specific data.
  • Privacy:
    • Mask or

Autonomous Vehicle Log Summarizer with n8n & Weaviate

Autonomous Vehicle Log Summarizer with n8n & Weaviate

Automated and autonomous fleets generate massive volumes of telemetry and diagnostic text logs across perception, planning, control, and sensor subsystems. Turning these raw logs into concise, queryable summaries is critical for debugging, compliance, and operational visibility. This reference guide documents a production-ready n8n workflow template – Autonomous Vehicle Log Summarizer – that uses embeddings, Weaviate, and an LLM agent to ingest logs, index them semantically, generate summaries, and persist structured insights into Google Sheets.

1. Functional overview

The workflow automates the end-to-end lifecycle of autonomous vehicle log analysis. At a high level, it:

  • Receives raw log payloads via an n8n Webhook node.
  • Splits large log bodies into overlapping chunks suitable for embedding and LLM context.
  • Generates vector embeddings using a HuggingFace embeddings model.
  • Stores vectors and metadata in a Weaviate vector index named autonomous_vehicle_log_summarizer.
  • Exposes the vector store as a Tool to an LLM agent for retrieval-augmented generation (RAG).
  • Uses an OpenAI Chat / Agent node to produce incident summaries and structured attributes such as severity and likely cause.
  • Writes final structured results to Google Sheets for reporting and downstream workflows.

The automation is designed for fleets where manual log inspection is infeasible. It supports:

  • Rapid extraction of key events such as near-misses or sensor failures.
  • Human-readable summaries for engineers, operations, and management.
  • Semantic search across historical incidents via Weaviate.
  • Integration with follow-up workflows such as ticketing or alerting.

2. System architecture

2.1 Core components

The template uses the following n8n nodes and external services:

  • Webhook node – Ingestion endpoint for HTTP POST requests containing log data.
  • Text Splitter node – Chunking of long logs into overlapping segments.
  • HuggingFace Embeddings node – Vectorization of text chunks.
  • Weaviate Insert node – Persistence of embeddings and metadata.
  • Weaviate Query node – Retrieval of relevant chunks for a given query.
  • Vector Store Tool node – Tool abstraction that exposes Weaviate search to the LLM agent.
  • Memory node (optional) – Short-term conversational context for multi-step agent interactions.
  • OpenAI Chat / Agent node – LLM-based summarization and field extraction.
  • Google Sheets node – Appending summaries and structured metadata to a spreadsheet.

2.2 Data flow sequence

  1. Log ingestion Vehicles, edge gateways, or upstream ingestion services POST log bundles to the configured n8n webhook URL. Payloads may be JSON, plain text, or compressed bodies that you decode upstream or within the workflow.
  2. Preprocessing and chunking The raw log text is split into fixed-size overlapping chunks. This improves embedding quality and prevents truncation in downstream LLM calls.
  3. Embedding generation Each chunk is passed to the HuggingFace Embeddings node, which produces a vector representation using the selected model.
  4. Vector store persistence Embeddings and associated metadata (vehicle identifiers, timestamps, module tags, etc.) are inserted into Weaviate under the autonomous_vehicle_log_summarizer index (class).
  5. Retrieval and RAG When a summary is requested or an automated trigger fires, the workflow queries Weaviate for relevant chunks. The Vector Store Tool exposes this retrieval capability to the agent node.
  6. LLM summarization The OpenAI Chat / Agent node consumes retrieved snippets as context and generates a concise incident summary plus structured fields such as severity, likely cause, and recommended actions.
  7. Result persistence The Google Sheets node appends the final structured output to a target sheet, making it available for audits, dashboards, and additional automation such as ticket creation or alerts.

3. Node-by-node breakdown

3.1 Webhook node – log ingestion

The Webhook node is the entry point for all log data.

  • Method: Typically configured as POST.
  • Payload types: JSON, raw text, or compressed data that you decode before splitting.
  • Common fields:
    • vehicle_id
    • software_version
    • log_timestamp
    • location or geo-region
    • module (for example, perception, control, planning)
    • log_body (the raw text to be summarized and indexed)

If upstream systems do not provide metadata, you can enrich the payload in n8n using additional nodes before chunking. This metadata is later stored in Weaviate to enable filtered semantic queries.

3.2 Text Splitter node – log chunking

Long logs are split into overlapping character-based segments to:

  • Preserve semantic continuity across events.
  • Fit within model token limits for embeddings and LLM context.
  • Improve retrieval granularity when querying Weaviate.

Recommended initial configuration:

  • chunkSize: 400 characters
  • chunkOverlap: 40 characters

These values are a starting point. Adjust them based on:

  • Typical log length and density of events.
  • Token limits and performance characteristics of your embedding model.
  • Desired retrieval resolution (shorter chunks for more granular search, larger chunks for more context per match).

Edge case consideration: if logs are shorter than chunkSize, the Text Splitter will typically output a single chunk. Ensure downstream nodes handle both single-chunk and multi-chunk cases without branching errors.

3.3 HuggingFace Embeddings node – vectorization

The HuggingFace Embeddings node converts each text chunk into a numerical vector suitable for similarity search.

  • Model selection: Choose a HuggingFace embeddings model that balances cost, latency, and semantic quality for your use case.
  • Credentials: Configure your HuggingFace credentials in n8n to allow API access where required.
  • Metadata: It is recommended to store the model name and version in the metadata alongside each chunk to keep the index reproducible and auditable over time.

For early experimentation, smaller models can reduce latency and cost. For detailed root cause analysis or high-stakes incidents, higher-quality models may be justified even at higher resource consumption.

3.4 Weaviate Insert node – embedding persistence

The Weaviate Insert node writes embeddings and metadata into a Weaviate instance.

  • indexName / class: autonomous_vehicle_log_summarizer
  • Data stored:
    • Vector embedding for each chunk.
    • Chunk text.
    • Metadata such as:
      • vehicle_id
      • log_timestamp
      • module (for example, perception, control)
      • software_version
      • source_file or log reference.
      • Embedding model identifier.

This metadata enables filtered semantic search, for example:

  • Restricting queries to a specific vehicle or subset of vehicles.
  • Limiting search to a time range.
  • Filtering by module when investigating a particular subsystem.

For large fleets, consider retention policies at the Weaviate level to manage index growth and storage costs.

3.5 Weaviate Query node & Vector Store Tool – retrieval

When an engineer initiates an investigation or when an automated process runs, the workflow queries Weaviate to retrieve the most relevant chunks for the incident under review.

  • Query source: Could be a natural language question, a vehicle-specific query, or a generic request for recent incidents.
  • Weaviate Query node: Performs vector similarity search, optionally with filters based on metadata (for example, vehicle_id or time window).
  • Vector Store Tool node: Wraps the query capability as a Tool that the LLM agent can call during reasoning. This enables retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) where the agent dynamically fetches supporting context.

The retrieved chunks are passed to the agent as context snippets. The workflow should handle cases where:

  • No relevant chunks are found (for example, return a fallback message or low-confidence summary).
  • Too many chunks are retrieved (for example, limit the number of chunks or total tokens passed to the LLM).

3.6 Memory node – conversational context (optional)

A Memory node can be added to maintain short-term context across multiple agent turns. This is useful when:

  • Engineers ask follow-up questions about the same incident.
  • The agent needs to refine or extend previous summaries without reloading all context.

Keep memory limited to avoid unnecessary token usage and to prevent older, less relevant context from influencing new summaries.

3.7 OpenAI Chat / Agent node – summarization and extraction

The OpenAI Chat / Agent node orchestrates the LLM-based summarization and field extraction. It uses:

  • The retrieved log snippets as context.
  • The Vector Store Tool to fetch additional context if needed.
  • A structured prompt that defines the required outputs (summary, severity, cause, actions).

Typical outputs include:

  • One-sentence incident summary.
  • Severity classification such as Low, Medium, or High.
  • Likely cause as a short textual explanation.
  • Recommended immediate action for operators or engineers.

To simplify downstream processing, you can instruct the agent to return a consistent format (for example, JSON or a delimited string). The template uses a clear, explicit prompt to drive consistent, concise outputs.

3.8 Google Sheets node – result storage

The final step appends the agent output and relevant metadata to a Google Sheets document.

  • Operation: Typically Append or Add Row.
  • Columns may include:
    • Incident timestamp.
    • vehicle_id.
    • Summary sentence.
    • Severity level.
    • Likely cause.
    • Recommended action.
    • Link or reference to the original log or Weaviate object ID.

These rows can trigger additional automations (for example, ticket creation, notifications) or feed dashboards for fleet monitoring.

4. Configuration details and best practices

4.1 Chunking strategy

Effective chunking is crucial for high-quality retrieval.

  • Use chunkSize values large enough to capture full events such as error traces or sensor dropout sequences.
  • Increase chunkOverlap when events span boundaries so that each chunk contains enough context for the LLM to interpret the issue.
  • Monitor LLM token usage and adjust chunk parameters to avoid exceeding context limits during summarization.

4.2 Embedding model selection

Model choice impacts accuracy, latency, and cost.

  • For early-stage deployments or high-throughput pipelines, smaller HuggingFace models can be sufficient and cost-effective.
  • For high-precision tasks such as detailed root cause analysis, consider more capable embeddings models even if they are more resource-intensive.
  • Record the model name and version in metadata for future reproducibility and auditability.

4.3 Metadata design and filtering

Rich metadata in Weaviate is essential for accurate and targeted retrieval.

  • Include fields such as:
    • vehicle_id
    • module
    • geo_region or location.
    • software_version.
    • Log-level or severity if available.
  • Use these fields in Weaviate filters to:
    • Limit queries to specific vehicles or fleets.
    • Focus on a given time window.
    • Reduce hallucination risk by narrowing the search space.

4.4 Prompt design for the agent

The agent prompt should explicitly define the required outputs and format. A sample prompt used in the template is:

Analyze the following retrieved log snippets and produce:
1) One-sentence summary of the incident
2) Severity: Low/Medium/High
3) Likely cause (one line)
4) Recommended immediate action

Context snippets:
{{retrieved_snippets}}  

For production use:

  • Specify a strict output structure such as JSON keys or CSV-style fields.
  • Constrain the maximum length for each field to keep Google Sheets rows compact.
  • Remind the model to base conclusions only on provided context and to state uncertainty when context is insufficient.

4.5 Security and compliance considerations

Autonomous vehicle logs may contain sensitive telemetry or indirectly identifiable information.

  • Encrypt data in transit and at rest for:
    • Weaviate storage.
    • Google Sheets.
    • Backups and intermediate storage layers.
  • Redact or hash sensitive identifiers such as VINs or driver

Automate Abandoned Cart Emails with n8n & RAG

Automate Abandoned Cart Emails with n8n & RAG

Imagine this: someone spends time browsing your store, adds a few products to their cart, then disappears. Frustrating, right? The good news is that you can win many of those customers back automatically with smart, personalized abandoned cart emails.

In this guide, we will walk through a complete n8n workflow that does exactly that. It uses embeddings, a vector store, and a RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) agent to turn cart data into tailored email content. You get a production-ready flow that captures events, stores context, retrieves the right info, writes the email, and logs everything, all without building your own backend.

Grab a coffee, and let’s break it down step by step.

Why bother automating abandoned cart emails?

Abandoned cart emails are one of the most effective retention tools in ecommerce. People already showed intent by adding items to their cart, so a well-timed reminder can bring a surprising amount of that revenue back.

When you automate this with n8n, you:

  • React instantly when a cart is abandoned.
  • Stay consistent, instead of manually sending follow-ups.
  • Use customer and product context to personalize each message.

The result is usually better open rates, more clicks, and more completed purchases. And once it is set up, the system just runs in the background for you.

What this n8n workflow actually does

Let us start with the big picture. This workflow connects your store to a RAG-powered email generator and a few helpful tools for logging and alerts. End-to-end, it:

  • Receives an abandoned cart event via a Webhook Trigger.
  • Splits cart and product text into smaller chunks with a Text Splitter.
  • Creates semantic embeddings using Cohere (or another embedding provider).
  • Saves those embeddings in a Supabase vector store so they can be searched later.
  • Queries that vector store when it is time to generate an email and exposes it as a Vector Tool for the RAG agent.
  • Uses a Chat Model (like OpenAI Chat) plus Window Memory to keep short-term context.
  • Runs a RAG Agent to write personalized abandoned cart email copy.
  • Logs outcomes to Google Sheets for tracking and analysis.
  • Sends a Slack alert whenever something fails so you do not miss issues.

In other words, from the moment a cart is abandoned to the moment an email is written and logged, this workflow handles the entire journey.

When should you use this template?

This n8n template is ideal if:

  • You run an online store and want to recover more abandoned carts automatically.
  • You like the idea of AI-generated email copy, but still want it grounded in real product and customer data.
  • You prefer not to build and maintain a custom backend for handling events, vectors, and email generation.

If you are already using tools like Supabase, Cohere, OpenAI, Google Sheets, and Slack, this will plug nicely into your existing stack. Even if you are not, the template gives you a clear structure to follow.

How the core pieces fit together

Let us walk through the main nodes in the workflow and how they work together to create those emails.

1. Webhook Trigger: catching the abandoned cart

The whole flow starts with a Webhook Trigger node. You expose a POST endpoint, such as /abandoned-cart-email, and configure your store or analytics platform to call it whenever a cart is considered abandoned.

The webhook payload typically includes:

  • Customer ID and email address.
  • Cart items and item descriptions.
  • Prices and totals.
  • Timestamp or session info.

Keep this payload focused on what you need to personalize the email. The lighter it is, the easier it is to maintain and debug.

2. Text Splitter: preparing content for embeddings

Product descriptions or notes can get pretty long. To make them useful for semantic search, the workflow uses a Text Splitter node to break them into smaller chunks.

In this template, the Text Splitter is set up with:

  • Chunk size: 400 characters
  • Overlap: 40 characters

This overlap helps preserve sentence continuity between chunks. You can tune these values based on your content. Smaller chunks give you more precise vectors but can increase storage and retrieval costs.

3. Embeddings (Cohere): turning text into vectors

Once the text is split, each chunk is converted into an embedding using a semantic model. In the example, the workflow uses Cohere’s embed-english-v3.0 model.

Why embeddings? They let you search by meaning instead of exact keywords. That way, when your RAG agent needs context about a product or customer, it can find the most relevant chunks even if the wording is different.

When choosing an embedding provider, keep an eye on:

  • Cost per request.
  • Latency and performance.
  • Language coverage and model quality.

4. Supabase Insert: building your vector store

Next, those embeddings are stored in Supabase, acting as your vector database. The workflow inserts each embedding into a consistent index, for example "abandoned_cart_email".

Alongside the vector itself, you store useful metadata, such as:

  • product_id
  • item_name
  • price
  • cart_id

This metadata makes it easier to filter and audit later. You can see exactly which products and carts were involved in each email, and you can refine your retrieval logic over time.

5. Supabase Query & Vector Tool: retrieving the right context

When it is time to generate an email, the workflow queries that same index in Supabase to fetch the most relevant vectors for the current cart or customer.

Typically, you retrieve the top-k nearest vectors, where k is a small number like 3 to 8, so the prompt stays focused. The workflow then exposes this vector search as a Vector Tool to the RAG agent.

This lets the agent pull in:

  • Product details and descriptions.
  • FAQ content or support notes.
  • Relevant customer notes or history, if you store them.

Instead of guessing what to say, the agent can rely on real, retrieved context.

6. Window Memory: keeping short-term context

The Window Memory node helps the RAG agent remember recent interactions or events. This is useful when:

  • The same customer triggers multiple abandoned cart events.
  • You want the agent to stay aware of the last few steps in the flow.

By maintaining a limited window of past context, the agent can produce more coherent and consistent responses without overwhelming the model with too much history.

7. Chat Model & RAG Agent: writing the email

At the heart of the workflow is the Chat Model (for example, OpenAI Chat) combined with a RAG Agent. Here is what happens:

  • The Chat Model provides the language generation capability.
  • The RAG Agent pulls in relevant context from the vector store via the Vector Tool.
  • The agent uses a system message and prompt template to shape the final email.

A typical system message might be:

"You are an assistant for Abandoned Cart Email."

Then you give the agent a prompt that asks it to produce key elements like the subject line, preview text, HTML body, and a call to action.

8. Append Sheet (Google Sheets): logging everything

Once the email content is generated, the workflow appends a new row to a Google Sheet. This log might include:

  • The generated email content.
  • Status or outcome flags.
  • Any metrics or IDs you want to track.

This sheet becomes your lightweight analytics and audit trail. Over time, you can use it to track delivery, opens, clicks, and even recovered revenue tied to specific email variants.

9. Slack Alert: catching errors quickly

If something goes wrong, you do not want to find out days later. That is where the Slack node comes in.

On errors, the workflow posts a short alert to a channel like #alerts with key details about what failed, such as:

  • Credential issues.
  • Rate limit problems.
  • Malformed webhook payloads.

This way, you can jump in quickly, fix the problem, and keep your automation running smoothly.

A practical prompt template for your RAG Agent

Want consistent, conversion-focused copy? Here is a simple prompt structure you can adapt for the agent:

<system>You are an assistant for Abandoned Cart Email.</system>
<user>Generate an abandoned cart email for this customer:
- Customer name: {{customer_name}}
- Cart items: {{item_list}}
- Product highlights and context from vector store: {{retrieved_context}}
Return: subject, preview_text, body_html, recommended_cta, personalization_notes.
</user>

You can tweak the tone, brand voice, or formatting in this template, but the structure gives the model everything it needs to produce a complete email.

Best practices to get the most from this workflow

Once you have the basics running, a few small tweaks can make a big difference.

  • Tune retrieval size: Start by retrieving 3 to 8 top vectors. Too few and you might miss context, too many and the prompt can get noisy or expensive.
  • Chunking strategy: A chunk overlap around 10 percent is a good starting point. It helps preserve sentence flow across chunks.
  • Use metadata wisely: Store product metadata with embeddings so you can filter by category, price range, or in-stock status during retrieval.
  • Personalize thoughtfully: Use the customer’s first name and mention specific items from their cart to build trust and relevance.
  • Respect compliance: Include unsubscribe options, honor do-not-contact flags, and only store the PII you truly need.
  • Monitor performance: Log both successes and failures, and use Slack alerts to spot unusual error spikes early.
  • A/B test your copy: Try different subject lines and CTAs, record the variants in Google Sheets, and see what actually performs best.

Scaling and keeping costs under control

As volume grows, embedding and retrieval costs can add up. The good news is that they are fairly predictable, and you have several levers to optimize:

  • Cache static embeddings: Product descriptions rarely change. Embed them once and reuse the vectors instead of re-embedding every time.
  • Deduplicate content: Before inserting into the vector store, skip near-identical content to avoid unnecessary cost and clutter.
  • Use tiered models: Consider using a lower-cost embedding model for broad retrieval, then call a higher-end LLM only for final email generation.

With these strategies, you can scale your abandoned cart automation without nasty cost surprises.

How to test the workflow before going live

Before you flip the switch in production, it is worth running through a quick test checklist:

  1. Send a test POST request to the webhook with a sample cart payload.
  2. Check that text chunks are created and embeddings are successfully written to Supabase.
  3. Trigger the RAG agent flow and review the generated subject, preview text, and email body.
  4. Verify that a new row is appended to your Google Sheet and that Slack alerts fire correctly on simulated errors.

This gives you confidence that all the pieces are wired correctly before real customers hit the flow.

Subject line and CTA ideas to get you started

Stuck on copy ideas? Here are a few subject lines that mix urgency and relevance:

  • “[Name], your cart items are almost gone – save 10% now”
  • “Still thinking it over? Your [product] is waiting”
  • “Grab your [product] before it sells out”

For calls to action, keep it clear and aligned with what you want them to do. Examples include:

  • “Complete Your Purchase”
  • “Reserve My Items”
  • “View My Cart”

These are also great candidates for A/B tests inside your workflow.

Security and data privacy considerations

Because this workflow touches customer data and external APIs, it is important to treat security and privacy as first-class concerns.

  • Secure credentials: Store Supabase, Cohere, OpenAI, Google Sheets, and Slack credentials inside n8n’s credentials system, not in plain text.
  • Validate webhooks: Use HMAC signatures or signed payloads so your webhook only accepts legitimate requests.
  • Minimize PII in vectors: Avoid storing sensitive personal data in vector metadata, and apply retention policies that align with GDPR or other regional regulations.

With these safeguards in place, you can enjoy the benefits of automation without compromising trust.

Next steps: putting the template to work

Ready to turn this into a live, revenue-saving workflow?

  • Import the n8n workflow template into your own n8n instance.
  • Connect your credentials for Supabase, Cohere, OpenAI, Google Sheets, and Slack.
  • Send a few realistic test webhooks with real-world cart data.
  • Iterate on your prompt template, retrieval settings, and email tone until it matches your brand.
  • Start tracking results and run A/B tests on subject lines and CTAs.

Call to action: Want the ready-to-import workflow JSON and a production checklist? Grab the template and setup guide from our resources page, or reach out to our automation team if you would like a custom implementation tailored to your stack.

By combining n8n with vector search and RAG-powered content generation, you can send highly personalized abandoned cart emails at scale. Keep monitoring, testing, and iterating, and you will steadily increase the revenue you recover from carts that used to be lost.

Ad Campaign Performance Alert in n8n

Ad Campaign Performance Alert in n8n

Ever wished your ad campaigns could tap you on the shoulder when something’s off?

One day your ads are crushing it, the next day your CTR tanks, your CPA spikes, or conversions quietly slip away. If you are not watching dashboards 24/7, those changes can sneak past you and cost real money.

That is exactly where this Ad Campaign Performance Alert workflow in n8n comes in. It pulls in performance data through a webhook, stores rich context in a vector database (Pinecone), uses embeddings (Cohere) to understand what is going on, and then lets an LLM agent (OpenAI) explain what happened in plain language. Finally, it logs everything into Google Sheets so you have a clean audit trail.

Think of it as a smart assistant that watches your campaigns, compares them to similar issues in the past, and then tells you what might be wrong and what to do next.

What this n8n template actually does

At a high level, this automation:

  • Receives ad performance data via a POST webhook from your ad platform or ETL jobs.
  • Splits and embeds the text (like logs or notes) using Cohere so it can be searched semantically later.
  • Stores everything in Pinecone as vector embeddings with useful metadata.
  • Looks up similar past incidents when a new anomaly comes in.
  • Asks an OpenAI-powered agent to analyze the situation and suggest next steps.
  • Writes a structured alert into Google Sheets for tracking, reporting, and follow-up.

So instead of just seeing “CTR dropped,” you get a context-aware explanation like “CTR dropped 57% vs baseline, similar to that time you changed your creative and targeting last month,” plus concrete recommendations.

When should you use this workflow?

This template is ideal if you:

  • Manage multiple campaigns and cannot manually check them every hour.
  • Want to move beyond simple “if CTR < X then alert” rules.
  • Care about understanding why performance changed, not just that it changed.
  • Need a historical trail of alerts for audits, reporting, or post-mortems.

You can run it in real time for live campaigns, or feed it daily batch reports if that fits your workflow better.

Why this workflow makes your life easier

  • Automated detection – Campaign logs are ingested and indexed in real time so you do not need to babysit dashboards.
  • Context-aware analysis – Embeddings and vector search surface similar past incidents, so you are not starting from scratch every time.
  • Human-friendly summaries – The LLM explains likely causes and recommended actions in plain language.
  • Built-in audit trail – Every alert lands in Google Sheets for easy review, sharing, and analysis.

How the architecture fits together

Here is the core tech stack inside the template:

  • Webhook (n8n) – Receives JSON payloads with ad performance metrics.
  • Splitter – Breaks long notes or combined logs into manageable chunks.
  • Embeddings (Cohere) – Converts text chunks into vectors for semantic search.
  • Vector Store (Pinecone) – Stores embeddings with metadata and lets you query similar items.
  • Query & Tool nodes – Wrap Pinecone queries so the agent can pull relevant context.
  • Memory & Chat (OpenAI) – Uses an LLM with conversation memory to generate explanations and action items.
  • Google Sheets – Captures structured alert rows for humans to review.

All of this is orchestrated inside n8n, so you can tweak and extend the workflow as your needs grow.

Step-by-step: how the nodes work together

1. Webhook: your entry point into n8n

You start by setting up a POST webhook in n8n, for example named ad_campaign_performance_alert. This is the endpoint your ad platform or ETL job will send data to.

The webhook expects JSON payloads with fields like:

{  "campaign_id": "campaign_123",  "timestamp": "2025-08-30T14:00:00Z",  "metrics": {"ctr": 0.012, "cpa": 24.5, "conversions": 5},  "notes": "Daily batch from ad platform"
}

You can include extra fields as needed, but at minimum you want identifiers, timestamps, metrics, and any notes or anomaly descriptions.

2. Splitter: breaking big logs into bite-sized chunks

If your notes or logs are long, sending them as one big block to the embedding model usually hurts quality. So the workflow uses a character-based text splitter with settings like:

  • chunkSize around 400
  • overlap around 40

This splits large texts into overlapping chunks that preserve context while still being embedding-friendly. Short logs may not need much splitting, but this setup keeps you safe for bigger payloads.

3. Embeddings with Cohere: giving your logs semantic meaning

Each chunk then goes to Cohere (or another embeddings provider if you prefer). You use a stable embedding model and send:

  • The chunk text itself.
  • Relevant metadata such as campaign_id, timestamp, and metric deltas.

The result is a vector representation of that chunk that captures semantic meaning. The workflow stores these embedding results so they can be inserted into Pinecone.

4. Inserting embeddings into Pinecone

Next, the workflow writes those embeddings into a Pinecone index, for example named ad_campaign_performance_alert.

Each vector is stored with metadata like:

  • campaign_id
  • Date or timestamp
  • metric_type (CTR, CPA, conversions, etc.)
  • The original chunk text

This setup lets you later retrieve similar incidents based on semantic similarity, filter by campaign, or narrow down by date range.

5. Query + Tool: finding similar past incidents

Once a new payload is processed and inserted, the workflow can immediately query the Pinecone index. You typically query using:

  • The latest error text or anomaly description.
  • Key metric changes that describe the current issue.

The n8n Tool node wraps the Pinecone query and returns the top-k similar items. These similar incidents become context for the agent so it can say things like, “This looks similar to that spike in CPA you had after a landing page change.”

6. Memory & Chat (OpenAI): the brain of the operation

The similar incidents from Pinecone are passed into an OpenAI chat model with memory. This agent uses:

  • Current payload data.
  • Historical context from similar incidents.
  • Conversation memory, if you build multi-step flows.

From there, it generates a structured alert that typically includes:

  • Root-cause hypotheses based on what worked (or went wrong) in similar situations.
  • Suggested next steps, like pausing campaigns, shifting budget, or checking landing pages.
  • Confidence level and evidence, including references to similar logs or vector IDs.

The result feels less like a raw metric dump and more like a quick analysis from a teammate who remembers everything you have seen before.

7. Agent & Google Sheets: logging a clean, structured alert

Finally, the agent formats all that insight into a structured row and appends it to a Google Sheet, typically in a sheet named Log.

Each row can include fields such as:

  • campaign_id
  • timestamp
  • Current metric snapshot
  • alert_type
  • Short summary of what happened
  • Concrete recommendations
  • Links or IDs that point back to the original payload or vector entries

Example: what an alert row might look like

campaign_id | timestamp  | metric | current_value | baseline | alert_type | summary  | recommendations  | evidence_links
campaign_123 | 2025-08-30T14:00  | CTR  | 1.2%  | 2.8%  | CTR Drop  | "CTR dropped 57% vs baseline..." | "Check creative, audience change..."  | pinecone://...

This makes it easy to scan your sheet, filter by alert type or campaign, and hand off action items to your team.

How the alerting logic works

Before data hits the webhook, you will usually have some anomaly logic in place. Common approaches include:

  • Absolute thresholds For example, trigger an alert when:
    • CTR drops below 0.5%
    • CPA rises above $50
  • Relative change For example, alert when there is more than a 30% drop vs a 7-day moving average.
  • Statistical methods Use z-scores or anomaly detection models upstream, then send only flagged events into the webhook.

The nice twist here is that you can combine these rules with vector context. Even if the metric change is borderline, a strong match with a past severe incident can raise the priority of the alert.

Configuration tips & best practices

To get the most out of this n8n template, keep these points in mind:

  • Credentials Use n8n credentials for Cohere, Pinecone, OpenAI, and Google Sheets. Store keys in environment variables, not in plain text.
  • Metadata in Pinecone Always save campaign_id, metric deltas, and timestamps as metadata. This makes it easy to filter by campaign, date range, or metric type.
  • Chunking strategy Adjust chunkSize and overlap to match your log sizes. Short logs might not need aggressive splitting.
  • Retention policy Set up a strategy to delete or archive older vectors in Pinecone to manage cost and keep the index clean.
  • Cost control Batch webhook messages where possible, and choose embedding models that balance quality with budget.
  • Testing and validation Replay historical incidents through the workflow to check that:
    • Vector search surfaces relevant past examples.
    • The agent’s recommendations are useful and accurate.

Security & compliance: keep sensitive data safe

Even though embeddings are not reversible in the usual sense, they can still encode sensitive context. To stay on the safe side:

  • Mask or remove PII before generating embeddings.
  • Use tokenized identifiers instead of raw user IDs or emails.
  • Avoid storing raw user data in Pinecone whenever possible.
  • Encrypt your credentials and restrict Google Sheets access to authorized service accounts only.

Scaling the workflow as you grow

If your traffic grows or you manage lots of campaigns, you can scale this setup quite easily:

  • Throughput Use batch ingestion for high volume feeds and bulk insert vectors into Pinecone.
  • Sharding and segmentation Use metadata filters or separate indices per campaign, client, or vertical if you end up with millions of vectors.
  • Monitoring Add monitoring on your n8n instance for:
    • Execution metrics
    • Webhook latencies
    • Job failures or timeouts

Debugging tips when things feel “off”

If the alerts are not quite what you expect, here are some quick checks:

  • Log raw webhook payloads into a staging Google Sheet so you can replay them into the workflow.
  • Start with very small test payloads to make sure the splitter and embeddings behave as expected.
  • Verify Pinecone insertions by checking the index dashboard for recent vectors and metadata.
  • Inspect the agent prompt and memory settings if summaries feel repetitive or off-target.

Use cases & variations you can try

This template is flexible, so you can adapt it to different workflows:

  • Real-time alerts for live campaigns with webhook pushes from ad platforms.
  • Daily batch processing for overnight performance reports.
  • Cross-campaign analysis to spot creative-level or audience-level issues across multiple campaigns.
  • Alternative outputs such as sending alerts to Slack or PagerDuty in addition to Google Sheets for faster incident response.

Why this approach is different from basic rule-based alerts

Traditional alerting usually stops at “metric X crossed threshold Y.” This workflow adds:

  • Historical context through vector search.
  • Natural language analysis via an LLM agent.
  • A structured, auditable log of what happened and what you decided to do.

That combination helps your operations or marketing team react faster, with more confidence, and with less manual digging through logs.

Ready to try it out?

If you are ready to stop babysitting dashboards and let automation handle the first line of analysis, this n8n template is a great starting point.

To get going:

  1. Import the Ad Campaign Performance Alert template into your n8n instance.
  2. Add your Cohere, Pinecone, OpenAI, and Google Sheets credentials using n8n’s credential manager.
  3. Send a few test payloads from your ad platform or a simple script.
  4. Tune thresholds, prompts, and chunking until the alerts feel right for your workflow.

If you want help customizing the agent prompt, integrating additional tools, or scaling the pipeline, you can reach out for consulting or keep an eye on our blog for more automation templates and ideas.

n8n: Bank SMS Alerts to Telegram (RAG + Supabase)

n8n: Turn Bank SMS Alerts Into Smart Telegram Notifications (RAG + Supabase)

Imagine never having to dig through a messy SMS inbox again just to confirm a transaction, check a balance, or spot something suspicious. With the right automation, every bank SMS alert can turn into a structured, searchable, and enriched Telegram notification that you and your team can act on in real time.

This guide walks you through an n8n workflow template that does exactly that. It receives bank SMS alerts through a webhook, splits and embeds the message content, stores vectors in Supabase, and uses a Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) agent to enrich and log alerts. You will also see how to add error notifications via Slack and log events to Google Sheets.

More than just a tutorial, think of this as a starting point for a more focused, automated way of working. Once this workflow is in place, you free yourself from manual checks and open the door to deeper insights, fraud detection, and smarter decision making.

The Problem: Scattered SMS, Missed Signals, Constant Context Switching

Bank SMS alerts are valuable, but they often arrive at the worst possible moment. You might be in a meeting, working deeply on a project, or away from your phone. Over time, your SMS inbox becomes a long, unstructured list of messages that are hard to search and even harder to analyze.

Key challenges you might recognize:

  • Important transaction alerts get buried under other messages.
  • Reviewing past transactions means scrolling endlessly through SMS threads.
  • Teams cannot easily collaborate around alerts that live on one person’s phone.
  • Spotting anomalies or patterns is nearly impossible without structured data.

If this sounds familiar, you are not alone. The good news is that you do not have to stay stuck in this reactive mode. With n8n, Supabase, and a RAG workflow, you can transform these raw SMS alerts into a real-time, intelligent notification system.

The Mindset Shift: From Manual Monitoring To Automated Insight

Automation is not just about saving time. It is about upgrading how you work. Instead of checking SMS messages manually, you can:

  • Receive alerts in a centralized Telegram channel where your team can see and act on them.
  • Build a searchable history of transactions using embeddings and a vector database.
  • Use AI-powered enrichment to summarize transactions and highlight anomalies.
  • Log everything in Google Sheets for reporting, audits, or downstream workflows.

When you adopt this mindset, each workflow you build becomes a stepping stone toward a more focused, less interrupt-driven day. You stop reacting and start designing how information flows to you.

The Solution: An n8n Workflow Template For Bank SMS To Telegram

The template you are about to use connects SMS to Telegram through a RAG pipeline and Supabase vector store. It is designed to be practical, extensible, and easy to adapt to your own needs.

At a high level, the workflow does the following:

  • Receives SMS alerts via a Webhook Trigger.
  • Splits the SMS text into chunks using a Text Splitter.
  • Generates embeddings (OpenAI) for semantic understanding.
  • Stores vectors and metadata in a Supabase vector table.
  • Queries Supabase for related alerts and passes context to a RAG agent.
  • Uses a Chat Model (Anthropic or similar) to summarize and structure the alert.
  • Logs results to Google Sheets.
  • Sends Slack alerts if anything goes wrong.

This foundation gives you a robust, scalable way to manage financial alerts. From here, you can add Telegram delivery, fraud detection, dashboards, and more.

Architecture Overview: How The Pieces Work Together

To understand the power of this template, it helps to see how each component contributes to the end result.

  • Webhook Trigger – Receives incoming SMS payloads (HTTP POST) from your SMS provider or gateway.
  • Text Splitter – Splits longer SMS content into chunks for better embeddings.
  • Embeddings (OpenAI) – Converts text chunks into semantic vectors.
  • Supabase Insert & Query – Stores vectors and metadata, and retrieves relevant context.
  • Vector Tool (RAG) – Exposes the Supabase vector index to the RAG agent.
  • Window Memory – Keeps recent conversation history for richer responses.
  • Chat Model (Anthropic or similar) – Powers the reasoning and summarization.
  • RAG Agent – Combines retrieved context and model output to generate structured, enriched results.
  • Append Sheet (Google Sheets) – Logs alerts and parsed fields for analysis.
  • Slack Alert – Notifies you if the workflow encounters errors.

Together, these nodes form a complete path from raw SMS to intelligent, actionable data. Next, you will walk through the setup step by step so you can bring this architecture to life in your own n8n instance.

Step-by-Step: Building The Workflow In n8n

1. Start With The Webhook Trigger

Begin in your n8n instance, whether self-hosted or on n8n.cloud. Create a new workflow and add a Webhook Trigger node.

  • Set HTTP Method to POST.
  • Choose a path, for example /bank-sms-alert-to-telegram.

This webhook URL becomes the endpoint that your SMS gateway or forwarding service will call whenever a bank SMS arrives. It is the entry point to your new automated alerting system.

2. Add A Text Splitter For Flexible Message Lengths

Even though many bank SMS alerts are short, your workflow should be ready for longer messages, concatenated SMS, or extra metadata like merchant notes and tags. Add a Text Splitter node after the webhook.

Suggested settings:

  • chunkSize = 400
  • chunkOverlap = 40

These values help preserve context across chunks so your embeddings and downstream RAG logic remain accurate. You can adjust them later as you see how your real data behaves.

3. Generate Embeddings With OpenAI

Next, connect the Text Splitter to an Embeddings node. In the template, text-embedding-3-small from OpenAI is used.

  • Configure your OpenAI API credentials in the n8n credentials manager.
  • Select the embedding model (such as text-embedding-3-small).

Embeddings transform your text chunks into vectors that capture meaning instead of just keywords. This is what enables semantic search and context-aware responses later on.

4. Store Vectors In Supabase

Now it is time to persist your embeddings. Add a Supabase Insert node (or a custom HTTP Request node if you prefer managing the API manually).

  • Create or use a Supabase table configured as a vector store.
  • Choose an index name such as bank_sms_alert_to_telegram.
  • Store:
    • The original SMS message.
    • Metadata like phone number and timestamp.
    • The embedding vector itself.

By storing both vectors and metadata, you build a rich history of alerts that you can query for patterns, similar transactions, or suspicious behavior.

5. Query The Vector Store For Context

When a new SMS comes in, you can use a Supabase Query node to search for related past alerts or contextual documents.

  • Configure similarity search against your vector column.
  • Return the most relevant previous alerts based on the new message.

Feed these query results into a Vector Tool node, available through the n8n LangChain integration. This tool exposes the Supabase index as a retriever for your RAG agent, giving it historical context to work with.

6. Configure The Chat Model And RAG Agent

Now you bring intelligence into the flow. Add a Chat Model node. The template uses Anthropic, but you can also use OpenAI or another model supported by n8n LangChain.

Then configure a RAG Agent node and connect:

  • The Vector Tool for retrieval.
  • The Chat Model for reasoning and generation.
  • Window Memory to keep recent conversation context if needed.

Use a system prompt tailored to your use case, for example:

“You are an assistant for Bank SMS Alert to Telegram: summarize transaction, detect anomalies, and output structured fields for logging.”

This prompt guides the agent to produce concise, human-friendly summaries and structured fields like status, amount, and transaction ID.

7. Log Results And Handle Errors Gracefully

To turn this into a reliable system, you need logging and error handling.

First, connect the RAG Agent output to a Google Sheets Append node:

  • Log fields such as Status, Summary, Amount, Transaction ID, and Timestamp.
  • Use this sheet for reporting, audits, or additional automations.

Next, add an error handler branch for the RAG Agent and connect it to a Slack Alert node:

  • Send a Slack message whenever processing fails.
  • Include diagnostic details, but never include secrets or sensitive data.

With this setup, you not only gain insight from every alert, you also gain confidence that you will be notified if something breaks.

Node-by-Node: How Each Piece Supports Your Automation

Webhook Trigger

The Webhook Trigger node is your gateway from SMS to automation. It receives the incoming SMS payload from providers like Twilio, Nexmo, or your telco’s webhook integration.

For security, if your webhook is exposed publicly, consider:

  • API key headers.
  • HMAC signatures.
  • IP allowlists.

Text Splitter

The Text Splitter node ensures that even long or combined messages are handled effectively. By breaking messages into overlapping chunks, you keep semantic boundaries intact and reduce the risk of losing important context.

Embeddings

The Embeddings node converts text into vector space using a model like OpenAI’s text-embedding-3-small. These vectors enable:

  • Similarity searches across past alerts.
  • Context retrieval for the RAG agent.
  • Better understanding of transaction patterns over time.

Supabase Insert & Query

Supabase acts as your vector database in this template. With it you can:

  • Insert vectors along with metadata such as merchant, phone number, timestamp, or amount.
  • Query by similarity to find related messages, such as same merchant or similar amounts.
  • Use results to power enrichment and anomaly detection.

Window Memory & Vector Tool

The Window Memory node keeps track of recent interactions so the RAG agent can respond with awareness of previous messages in the same conversation.

The Vector Tool node exposes your Supabase index as a retriever so the agent can pull in domain-specific documents or earlier alerts and reason over them.

RAG Agent + Chat Model

The RAG Agent combines the retrieved context from Supabase with the reasoning power of the Chat Model. This enables it to:

  • Summarize each transaction in a clear, human-friendly way.
  • Detect potential anomalies, such as duplicate charges or unusually large amounts.
  • Produce structured output ready for logging and downstream processing.

Security & Best Practices For Financial Data

Because you are working with financial alerts, security is essential. Keep these practices in mind:

  • Avoid storing raw sensitive data unless you have proper encryption and compliance in place.
  • Redact or tokenize account numbers and personally identifiable information (PII).
  • Use HTTPS and webhook verification between your SMS provider and n8n, such as IP whitelisting or HMAC signatures.
  • Restrict access to Supabase using API keys and row-level security policies.
  • Store credentials in environment variables in n8n and rotate API keys regularly.
  • Retain only the minimum necessary data and purge old vectors if they are no longer needed.

Troubleshooting & Optimization Tips

As you experiment and improve the workflow, you might run into small issues. Here are some quick checks:

  • If embeddings fail, verify your OpenAI credentials and confirm the model name in n8n.
  • If Supabase inserts or queries fail, check CORS settings and database permissions.
  • If important context seems lost or duplicated, adjust the Text Splitter chunkSize and chunkOverlap.
  • Use the Slack Alert node to get immediate visibility into runtime errors, but avoid sending secrets or full payloads.

Each issue you solve makes your automation more resilient and prepares you to build even more advanced workflows.

Where To Go Next: Enhancements & Growth Ideas

Once this template is running, you have a solid foundation. From here, you can grow your automation in powerful ways:

  • Send alerts to Telegram by adding a Telegram node that posts enriched alerts directly to a channel or bot, with formatted amounts and inline buttons.
  • Add fraud detection by integrating a dedicated model that flags suspicious transactions and escalates to security teams.
  • Enrich metadata using fields like merchant name or geolocation to build smarter rules and correlation workflows.
  • Build a dashboard with tools like Grafana or Supabase Studio to review and search historical alerts using semantic search.

Each enhancement helps you move from simple notification handling toward a full financial intelligence layer powered by automation.

Sample Webhook Payload

Here is an example of the payload your webhook might receive from an SMS gateway:

{  "from": "+1234567890",  "to": "+1098765432",  "message": "Debited 500.00 USD at ACME Store on 2025-01-10. Balance: 1200.00 USD",  "timestamp": "2025-01-10T12:34:56Z"
}

You can use this sample to test your n8n workflow before connecting a live SMS provider.

Bringing It All Together: Your Next Step In Automation

This n8n template – Webhook → Text Splitter → Embeddings → Supabase → RAG Agent → Google Sheets / Slack – gives you a powerful starting point for real-time, enriched bank SMS alerting to Telegram.

It is flexible enough to grow with you, whether you want simple notifications, advanced fraud detection, multi-channel alerts, or full reporting dashboards. Most importantly, it helps you reclaim your attention by letting automation handle the repetitive monitoring work.

To get started:

  • Deploy the template in your n8n environment.
  • Secure your API keys and review your data handling practices.
  • Experiment with prompts, text splitting, and vector indexing strategies.
  • Test with sample SMS payloads, then connect your real SMS gateway.

Use this workflow as a foundation, then keep iterating. Each small improvement compounds into a smoother, more intelligent system that supports your personal or business growth.

Ready to automate more of your financial workflows? Spin up this template in your n8n instance, explore how it fits your processes, and do not hesitate to adapt it