n8n

Integrate Intutic governance with n8n — the workflow automation platform.

How it works

n8n is governed at two levels. intutic gates install writes the files below for a recorded n8n harness:

1. Detection: intutic init checks for an n8n API at N8N_URL (default http://localhost:5678), or an N8N_API_TOKEN in the environment.
2. Blocking gate (workflow-level): It writes an n8n external hook module to ~/.intutic/hooks/n8n-governance-hook.js. Loaded via EXTERNAL_HOOK_FILES (see below), its workflow.preExecute hook runs before every workflow execution, evaluates each node's type and parameters against the compiled protection floor and your policy snapshot, and throws on a block-severity match — aborting the execution with an error naming the offending node and rule.
3. Workflow Generation: It builds and writes a pre-configured, importable n8n 1.x workflow JSON to ~/.intutic/n8n/governance-workflow.json (event forwarding to a control plane — telemetry, not enforcement).
4. Environment Setup: It generates a .intutic/env/n8n.env file within the workspace, plus ~/.intutic/n8n/INSTALL.md with the gate's installation steps.

n8n has no instructions file: an AI Agent node's system message is part of the workflow, so the text of your rule sets cannot reach the model through a file. The blocking gate still enforces the rules compiled from them. See Where rule sets go.

The blocking gate

Manual, deployment-side installation

EXTERNAL_HOOK_FILES is read by the n8n server process at startup — the Intutic daemon cannot set another process's environment. Until you set it and restart n8n, the gate does not run:

export EXTERNAL_HOOK_FILES=~/.intutic/hooks/n8n-governance-hook.js

Granularity is honest here: n8n's hook surface is per workflow execution, not per tool call. The gate maps the shared rule model onto it — a node's type stands in for the tool name (subject: tool rules match it), and the node's serialized parameters are what command/path rules and WHERE (argPattern) rules match. One offending node aborts the whole execution.

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Config Details

Property	Value
Harness type	n8n
Rules file	None (n8n reads no instructions file)
Config file	~/.intutic/n8n/governance-workflow.json
Status	✅ Fully Supported
Format	n8n 1.x Workflow JSON

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Setup & Activation

1. Detect & Generate

Run the Intutic init command to detect active harnesses, then install the gates:

intutic init
intutic gates install

If n8n was detected, intutic gates install writes the gate, INSTALL.md and the importable workflow JSON to ~/.intutic/n8n/governance-workflow.json. It does not change your workflows through the n8n API. Then set EXTERNAL_HOOK_FILES and restart n8n, as above.