n8n-render

This repository exists to run a dedicated n8n instance on Render for the AI agent project.

What This Is For

Use this repo when you want a stable, separate n8n deployment that receives webhook calls from the AI Agent API and executes your workflows in production.

In short:

• ai-agent-n8n handles the chat API and UI.
• n8n-render hosts the automation/workflow engine (n8n).
• The API sends requests to an n8n webhook URL, and n8n returns the processed response.

How It Connects To Your AI Agent

Architecture flow:

1. User sends a message in the AI agent chat.
2. The Node.js API (ai-agent-n8n) receives POST /agent.
3. The service layer calls an n8n webhook endpoint hosted from this repo.
4. n8n runs the workflow and returns JSON.
5. The API responds back to the user.

Related app repo:

• https://github.com/sfturio/ai-agent-n8n

Project link:

• https://ai-agent-n8n-zefs.onrender.com/

Why Keep This Separate

Keeping n8n in its own repository makes it easier to:

• deploy/redeploy workflows independently from API code,
• isolate n8n environment variables and secrets,
• avoid mixing Node app runtime concerns with workflow runtime concerns.

Files In This Repo

• Dockerfile: uses the official n8nio/n8n image and exposes port 5678.
• .env.example: sample environment variables used to configure n8n.

Environment Variables

Main variables used here:

• N8N_HOST
• N8N_PORT
• GENERIC_TIMEZONE
• N8N_BASIC_AUTH_ACTIVE
• N8N_BASIC_AUTH_USER
• N8N_BASIC_AUTH_PASSWORD
• N8N_SECURE_COOKIE
• N8N_ENCRYPTION_KEY
• WEBHOOK_URL

For production, set strong values for auth password and encryption key.

Deploy On Render (High Level)

1. Create a new Web Service from this repository in Render.
2. Use Docker deployment (Render will build from Dockerfile).
3. Set environment variables from .env.example.
4. Save and deploy.
5. Copy your n8n webhook URL and configure it in ai-agent-n8n.

Cold Start Mitigation (Recommended)

To reduce first-message failures on Render free tier:

1. Create a dedicated warmup workflow in n8n:
   • Trigger: Webhook (method GET, path agent-warmup)
   • Action: Respond to Webhook with 200 and a simple JSON body.
2. Keep your main agent workflow in a separate webhook path.
3. In ai-agent-n8n set:
   • N8N_WARMUP_URL=https://your-n8n.onrender.com/webhook/agent-warmup
   • N8N_WARMUP_METHOD=GET
   • N8N_REQUEST_TIMEOUT_MS=45000 (or higher if needed)
4. Optionally use an external uptime ping on the warmup endpoint every 5 minutes.

This keeps n8n warm more often and lets the API gate requests until workflow readiness.

Render/Proxy Best Practices

• Set N8N_PROTOCOL=https
• Set N8N_PROXY_HOPS=1
• Set N8N_EDITOR_BASE_URL to your Render n8n URL
• Set WEBHOOK_URL to the same public URL
• Keep N8N_ENCRYPTION_KEY stable across redeploys
• Do not commit real .env credentials into Git

Notes

This repository is infrastructure support for the AI agent project, not the chat API itself.