n8n-skills

A package of official n8n guidance for coding agents, covering n8n workflows and the JavaScript or TypeScript code used in Code nodes. n8n is a tool for building connected, automated workflows.

In plain words
What is it for?
Writing and reviewing n8n Code nodes, expressions, loops, and error handling while working with n8n workflows.
Why use it?
It gives the agent n8n-specific knowledge while keeping Code-node source files in the repository and separating them from workflow changes.

Agent

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add agents/buttjer/n8n-decanter/n8n-skills
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/buttjer/n8n-decanter
Per session 27 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 1,633 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00027 $0.01633
Opus 5 $0.00014 $0.00816
Sonnet 5 $0.00005 $0.00327
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00163

Measured yesterday against content hash 8f8ecaff292c, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

n8n-skills scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured yesterday.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

docs/agents/n8n-skills.md · 133 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 133 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Use the official n8n skills. They are the best way to give your coding agent real n8n expertise, and n8n-decanter is built to pair with them, not to replace them. It rides n8n's own MCP server and skills for everything about workflow structure and lifecycle, and owns just one layer on top: the Code-node source. The skills fill in the knowledge decanter deliberately doesn't duplicate.

The one thing to know is the boundary — and decanter enforces it for you technically, so pairing the two is safe by construction. This page explains the integration, then how to turn it on.

What the skills are

n8n-io/skills is n8n's first-party agent knowledge pack: capability skills (markdown + inline examples) plus a routing meta-skill and reference docs, installed as a plugin (not an npm dependency). They come in two kinds, and the split matters here:

  • Knowledge skills — lean on these freely. Conceptual, standalone guidance for the runtime your Code-node files execute in. They document the same n8n your .js/.ts nodes run against, with no instance mutation:
    • n8n-code-nodes-official
    • n8n-expressions-official
    • n8n-loops-official
    • n8n-error-handling-official
    • n8n-credentials-and-security-official
    • n8n-binary-and-data-official
    • n8n-data-tables-official
    • n8n-debugging-official
  • Build / lifecycle skills — the default path for structure. n8n-workflow-lifecycle-official, n8n-node-configuration-official, n8n-subworkflows-official, n8n-agents-official, n8n-extending-mcp-official. These drive the n8n MCP server to create, build, wire, rename, publish, and archive workflows — which, under n8n-decanter, is exactly how structure work happens (decanter has no structure verbs of its own). The single carve-out is below.

The plugin installs the whole pack (you can't cherry-pick), and it isn't aware of this repo's layout. That's fine — the MCP guard plus the scaffolded AGENTS.md, not selective installation, are what hold the boundary.

Read the full file on GitHub · 133 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. yesterday First seen · 133 lines · 27 tokens per session scan A 8f8ecaff292c

Subscribe to this mod's changes

n8n-skills is an agent published in the GitHub repository buttjer/n8n-decanter (2 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 27 tokens to every session and 1,633 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.

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