n8n-skills

Official n8n Skills

n8n's MCP makes the connection. n8n Skills set the standard.

Built by the n8n team to pair with n8n's instance-level MCP server. Your coding agent can now build and edit workflows through the MCP, and the skills enable it to get it right the first time.

What's inside:

• 15 capability skills covering best practices across the full workflow lifecycle: sub-workflow reuse, expressions, loops and pagination, AI agents, error handling, credentials, Data Tables, debugging, and more.
• 50+ reference docs and worked examples loaded on demand: per-node gotchas, decision trees, and copy-pasteable workflow JSON / TypeScript SDK snippets.
• A SessionStart hook that loads the protocol on every session, including a compact reference for every n8n MCP tool.
• PreToolUse hooks that nudge your agent to consult the matching skill before high-impact MCP calls.

Prerequisite

An n8n instance (any plan, Cloud or self-hosted) with the instance-level MCP server enabled. See n8n's MCP setup guide.

Install

Pick your platform:

• Claude Code
• Other platforms

Claude Code

Inside Claude Code, run these one at a time:

/plugin marketplace add n8n-io/skills

/plugin install n8n-skills@n8n-io

Restart Claude Code. Skills load automatically.

Other platforms

Each coding agent has its own skill format. Follow your platform's docs for installing skills

skills.sh handles a few popular platforms via npx. From your project folder:

npx skills add n8n-io/skills

Compatibility varies by agent. Check skills.sh for support on your specific platform.

Then add a snippet to your AGENTS.md

This project uses n8n. When working with workflows, nodes, expressions, or
the n8n MCP tools, always start by loading the `using-n8n-skills` meta-skill
and follow its routing into the matching capability skill before acting.

The plugins ship a SessionStart hook that loads the entry-point skill for you. Plain skill installs don't have that hook, so the snippet is what cues your agent to start every n8n task by loading using-n8n-skills.

Skills inside

Skill	When it activates
n8n-workflow-lifecycle	Starting, designing, organizing, or finishing a workflow
n8n-subworkflows	Anything reusable, multi-step builds
n8n-extending-mcp	Need capabilities the MCP doesn't have
n8n-expressions	Writing {{}}, $json, $node
n8n-node-configuration	Configuring any node
n8n-code-nodes	Custom logic, Code node consideration
n8n-connections	IF/Switch/Merge wiring, multi-IO
n8n-loops	Loops, batching, paginated APIs
n8n-agents	LangChain Agent node, tools, system prompts, structured output
n8n-error-handling	Webhook APIs, production workflows
n8n-credentials-and-security	Auth, API keys, tokens
n8n-binary-and-data	Files, images, attachments, vision
n8n-data-tables	Data Tables: schemas, dedup, persistent state
n8n-debugging	Things break

A 15th meta-skill, using-n8n-skills, is loaded by the SessionStart hook in plugins and routes your agent to the right capability skill on every n8n task.

How it works

Each skill is a markdown file. Frontmatter tells the agent when to load it. The SessionStart hook routes to the right one on every n8n task; PreToolUse hooks pull the matching skill back into context before high-impact MCP calls. It's all just markdown. Disagree with a call? Fork it.

Related

• Official n8n MCP docs
• n8n MCP tools reference
• n8n

Contributing

See CLAUDE.md, the contributing guide for humans and AI agents alike. Open an issue first. We don't accept PRs that haven't been discussed in an issue.

Looking for contributors: feature parity plugins for other coding agents (Cursor, Codex, OpenCode, etc.). The skills are just markdown, the work is wrapping them so they activate in those harnesses the way they do in Claude Code.

License

Apache 2.0. See LICENSE.