Been running n8n with Ollama for a few months now for work automation. Wanted to share what I’ve learned since it’s not super well-documented.
The setup is just Docker Compose with n8n + Ollama + Postgres. n8n’s HTTP Request node talks directly to Ollama’s REST API — no custom nodes needed.
What I’m running:
- Email digest every morning (IMAP → Ollama → Slack)
- Document summarization (PDF watcher → Ollama → notes)
- Lead scoring from form webhooks
Zero API costs, everything stays on my server. If anyone wants the workflow templates I have a pack: https://workflows.neatbites.com/
Happy to answer questions about the setup.
Briefly. I didn’t like it as much as I like n8n. Perhaps it was not suitable to my use case. I hear a lot of good things about ActivePieces tho. You know, give it a spin and see if it gehaws with your flow. From what I understand, both can acomplish about the same. I think ActivePieces is geared more towards cloud deployments whereas n8n keeps things local.