n8n launches AI-powered assistant to build, run and debug automations from plain language

Workflow automation platform n8n has announced the launch of n8n Assistant, an AI-powered tool designed to close the gap between describing an automation and actually building it. According to the company's blog post, users can describe the outcome they want in plain language, and the AI assistant takes over from there: it plans the workflow, constructs it on the canvas, requests the credentials it needs, executes it, diagnoses failures, and iterates on fixes alongside the user. The result, the company stresses, is a standard n8n workflow, visible on the canvas, hand-editable, and logged on every run, rather than code locked away in a separate product.

The announcement positions reliability and transparency as the key differentiators. While n8n acknowledges that plenty of AI tools can generate an automation from a single sentence, it argues that the real test comes later: whether the workflow still runs a month on, whether teams can see what it did, and whether colleagues can maintain it. The assistant is also positioned as a successor to the company's earlier AI workflow builder, which produced a workflow once and stopped. Where the old tool stopped at generation, the new assistant builds, runs, and keeps improving.

Availability is currently limited to a preview flag, which n8n says reflects active development rather than restrictions on access, with additional features planned. On costs, the assistant draws on each plan's AI credit allocation, with usage tracked separately from the legacy builder; multi-round debugging builds consume more credits than those that succeed on the first attempt, and options to top up credits are expected in the coming weeks.