[HN Gopher] Effortless AI: No-Code Automation Using N8n Cloud an...
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       Effortless AI: No-Code Automation Using N8n Cloud and OpenAI Vision
       API
        
       Author : crazytest
       Score  : 40 points
       Date   : 2024-01-11 18:50 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (n8n-automation.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (n8n-automation.com)
        
       | splitrocket wrote:
       | So, this is interesting, but much more interesting is the
       | langchain stuff N8N has added to their latest release. Makes it
       | seamless to add in an army of interns to your workflow.
       | 
       | https://n8n.io/langchain/
        
         | crazytest wrote:
         | You're right. The Langchain integration is great, but you need
         | an extra account for it. But it is actually in the backlog to
         | write a tutorial about whats possible with Langchain too.
        
           | janober wrote:
           | fyi, a separate account should not be necessary any more as
           | the functionality got integrated into the regular version and
           | is so available for all users by default.
        
             | crazytest wrote:
             | great news! haven't seen it as I had to update my workspace
             | manually, but just did it.
        
       | artur_makly wrote:
       | what are some useful use cases startup entrepreneurs?
        
         | crazytest wrote:
         | I guess there are a lot. If you build a great UI you can use a
         | workflow like this to score presentation slides or whatever you
         | like
        
       | soco wrote:
       | Do I need to read the entire article to find out what the
       | tutorial is actually aiming to achieve? That's not very helpful
       | to the beginner it's supposed to serve...
        
         | crazytest wrote:
         | Thanks for the valuable feedback. Just added a paragraph under
         | the head picture to make clear what it is exactly about. Is
         | this helpful or would you do it in another way?
        
       | QuadrupleA wrote:
       | Automate what? What's n8n? And how no-code/ effortless is it if
       | I'm deciding between base64 encoded images vs url images, REST vs
       | GraphQL API, etc. in the first few paragraphs with no background
       | info on how to make those choices?
        
         | crazytest wrote:
         | Thanks for the feedback. I was not sure in what detail I should
         | go, but decided to name the options and make an easy choice to
         | go for if you follow along the tutorial. If you then decide you
         | want to dive deeper, you can dig into the documentation of e.g.
         | OpenAI. I definitely should link to for example the article
         | where I go into detail about HTTP Requests and what they are,
         | but I could not fit it into the article itself.
        
       | alwa wrote:
       | Even after clicking around the product pages a little, I'm afraid
       | I still don't understand what an n8n is or what it's seeking to
       | automate. Is "n8n" a colloquialism amongst front-end people, like
       | "i18n" or "a11y"? And as to "automation," I'm guessing from
       | context that this is like a Zapier kind of product?
       | 
       | And that the present announcement is that this product has an
       | integration with OpenAI Vision API now, provided you're willing
       | to store your API keys in the open?
       | 
       | I'm surprised to see it characterized as "no-code" but then
       | require HTTP headers to be entered by hand, and a valid JSON
       | payload to be hand-built to send over to the relevant OpenAI API.
       | 
       | The broader concept, though, seems cool. I can imagine the sort
       | of visual, business-side-person kind of power user who might have
       | a lot of fun playing with this type of workflow tool.
        
         | crazytest wrote:
         | n8n is the tool that is used to build the automation shown in
         | the tutorial, leveraging the OpenAI Vision API. That is
         | possible because it offers quite an open way to make HTTP
         | Requests, using the node for it. Yes, you need to define a
         | valid JSON as an input for the API, but I would still consider
         | it way more beginner-friendly than using the SDKs where you
         | would have to write "real" code and care about deployment and
         | executions.
        
         | toomuchtodo wrote:
         | n8n is a direct Zapier competitor with source available ("fair
         | code license"), https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=janober is
         | the founder.
         | 
         | Lots of interesting ways to extend workflow systems involving
         | LLMs and interfaces to them.
         | 
         | https://docs.n8n.io/choose-n8n/faircode-license/
         | 
         | https://hn.algolia.com/?q=n8n
        
       | tmcneal wrote:
       | I'm not quite sure how n8n works after reading the docs, but our
       | company Reflect provides an AI-driven approach to automation that
       | may be similar, but for a more narrower use-case: automated end-
       | to-end testing.
       | 
       | You can see a video example of how it works in our docs here
       | (https://reflect.run/docs/recording-tests/testing-with-ai/), but
       | the idea is that you describe the actions and assertions you want
       | to take in plain-text prompts, and the AI interprets those
       | prompts in real time and executes them against a running browser
       | session. In practice, it's a lot like writing a manual test
       | script and having it automatically execute. We use both GPT 3.5
       | and 4 and will be releasing Vision support once OpenAI has deemed
       | the gpt-4-turbo-with-vision model ready for production use.
        
         | crazytest wrote:
         | actually, that is what it is about, that it is not a narrower
         | use-case, and you can extend and change the workflows however
         | you like them. but an interesting way to present your own
         | company. Seems like you are doing something similar to what
         | https://www.octomind.dev/ is doing, right?
        
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       (page generated 2024-01-11 23:01 UTC)