n8n Platform Meta

Overview

This file contains general observations or hints which pertain to everything n8n.

Access (March 31st 2026)

All live n8n workflows are on the self-hosted instance. Therefore the cloud instance is safe to cancel.

The self-hosted n8n admin alone can access any of the live n8n workflows, credentials, or data tables. To be able to share them otherwise, a paid version would be needed. We are using the Community version.

Credentials troubleshooting

Several sets of n8n-default credentials which pertain to Microsoft are registered with <milos.tadic@hvcapital.com> for delegated access. This was done because it has made development a lot faster, as application-level permissions do not qualify for using default n8n nodes like SharePoint or Outlook ones, so the choice would often come down to five HTTP nodes versus a single default node.

It is expected that things may break as <milos.tadic@hvcapital.com> is deactivated, though any actual Outlook nodes have hopefully fully been replaced. This was addressed on several occasions with IT as switching towards automation@hvcapital.com for delegated access was proposed, but given the attention-driven usage of projects by a majority of the IM team, it was concluded that it is more cost-effective to wait until something breaks and someone actually complains about it.

Data

Where it was possible, Affinity was used as the source of truth. Where it was not possible, or where it was useful to n8n to enhance even Affinity-sourced data, n8n-internal data tables were used.

VCs

Initially sourced from Affinity, count 250, and continuously expanded by runtime of the “Deal Signal Sourcing” aka “Growth Sourcing” project. The purpose is to reduce Affinity API calls.

IM

Produced manually. Used across multiple workflows for whitelisting, validation, and identity resolution, for example to check whether a user is subscribed before a daily Brigitte goes out to them, or to quickly convert an Affinity person ID into a name.

Portfolio

Originally sourced from Affinity. Unclear whether it receives updates or which workflows it pertains.

Common Tasks

Manage the IM data table

Add new hires manually to IM data table.

TODOs to mitigate risks

DB full

Our self-hosted n8n instance is seemingly not actively set to limit the execution history, so the DB might eventually reach a limit because all email attachments are stored as binary blobs in Postgres. There are default protections such as a 14-day history limit.

Recommendation: DB full

There are n8n env vars, which we are currently implicitly allowing to default, to limit either the scope of past days of storage or the total number of executions stored, but I have not seen one which limits per-workflow history like the cloud does.

n8n docker image unstable resolution

I have set this to a specific version after stable incorrectly resolved to a freshly released n8n update, which was in fact not stable as it was incompatible with Alpine. This was during a period when IT was OOO in March 2026.

Recommendation: Docker image tag

Set the image tag to :oldstable or discuss alternatives

Infinite Perplexity cost

During a time of Perplexity issues, namely service unavailability and structured output format issues, a pragmatic infinite looping solution was developed by the principle of “third’s a charm”, meaning keep trying until the output format is correct. This poses a risk, which at the very latest is mitigated by the daily n8n reset.

Recommendation: Perplexity retries

This sub-workflow should be improved to include a hard limit.