Enables AI assistants to interact with and manage n8n workflows through natural language.
N8n MCP server exists for a simple reason — assistants are far more useful when they can act on N8n directly instead of describing what you should do. Enables AI assistants to interact with and manage n8n workflows through natural language.
A Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that allows AI assistants to interact with n8n workflows through natural language.
This project provides a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that empowers AI assistants to seamlessly interact with n8n, a popular workflow automation tool. It acts as a bridge, enabling AI assistants to programmatically manage and control n8n workflows and executions using natural language commands.
Installation goes through your MCP client rather than a global install: point it at @leonardsellem/n8n-mcp-server on npm and it is fetched when the client starts. The copy-paste blocks for Claude Desktop, Claude Code and Cursor are further down this page.
Once N8n is connected, these are the calls the assistant has available:
Prerequisites — The Prerequisites tool exposed by this serverBuilding — The Building tool exposed by this serverTesting — The Testing tool exposed by this serverLinting — The Linting tool exposed by this serverYou will need 5 environment variables: N8N_API_URL, N8N_API_KEY, N8N_WEBHOOK_USERNAME, N8N_WEBHOOK_PASSWORD, YOUR_N8N_API_KEY. The server will not start without them, which is usually why the tools fail to appear on a first run. Keep credentials in your client's env block or a secrets manager rather than in a file you might commit.
Among the developer tooling options, the useful question is rarely "what can it do" but "what does it cost you to run" — permissions, credentials, and how much of your context its toolset consumes. N8n's toolset — Prerequisites, Building, Testing and 1 more — is a fair guide to whether it matches your workflow. It is maintained by leonardsellem; worth a glance at recent repository activity before you build anything load-bearing on it.
SyncDev reviews every entry in this directory against the project's own documentation before publishing, and revisits them as servers change.
| Tool | What it does |
|---|---|
| Prerequisites | The Prerequisites tool exposed by this server. |
| Building | The Building tool exposed by this server. |
| Testing | The Testing tool exposed by this server. |
| Linting | The Linting tool exposed by this server. |
{
"mcpServers": {
// Give your server a unique name
"n8n-local": {
// Use 'node' to execute the built JavaScript file
"command": "node",
// Provide the *absolute path* to the built index.js file
"args": [
"/path/to/your/cloned/n8n-mcp-server/build/index.js"
// On Windows, use double backslashes:
// "C:\\path\\to\\your\\cloned\\n8n-mcp-server\\build\\index.js"
],
// Environment variables needed by the server
"env": {
"N8N_API_URL": "http://your-n8n-instance:5678/api/v1", // Replace with your n8n URL
"N8N_API_KEY": "YOUR_N8N_API_KEY", // Replace with your key
// Add webhook credentials only if you plan to use webhook tools
// "N8N_WEBHOOK_USERNAME": "your_webhook_user",
// "N8N_WEBHOOK_PASSWORD": "your_webhook_password"
},
// Ensure the server is enabled
"disabled": false,
// Default autoApprove settings
"autoApprove": []
}
// ... other servers might be configured here
}
}Configuration as documented by the project. Restart the client after saving.
| Variable | Description | Required |
|---|---|---|
| N8N_API_URL | Endpoint or connection string the server talks to. | Yes |
| N8N_API_KEY | Credential the server authenticates with. | Yes |
| N8N_WEBHOOK_USERNAME | Configuration value read at startup. | Optional |
| N8N_WEBHOOK_PASSWORD | Configuration value read at startup. | Optional |
| YOUR_N8N_API_KEY | Credential the server authenticates with. | Yes |
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