n8n-install/README.md

n8n Ecosystem Installer

n8n Ecosystem Installer is an open, docker compose template designed to significantly simplify the setup of a comprehensive development environment centered around n8n and Flowise. It bundles essential supporting tools like Open WebUI (as an interface for n8n agents), Supabase (database, vector store, auth), Qdrant (high-performance vector store), Langfuse (LLM observability), SearXNG (private metasearch), Grafana/Prometheus (monitoring), Crawl4ai (web crawling), and Caddy (managed HTTPS).

This is Cole's version with a couple of improvements and the addition of Supabase, Open WebUI, Flowise, Langfuse, SearXNG, and Caddy! Also, the RAG AI Agent workflows from the video will be automatically in your n8n instance if you use this setup instead of the base one provided by n8n! Note: these workflows might require external LLM API keys. Also, you have the option during setup to automatically import over 300 community workflows into your n8n instance!

Important Links

• Based on a project by coleam00

• Original Starter Kit by the n8n team

• Community forum over in the oTTomator Think Tank

• GitHub Kanban board for feature implementation and bug squashing.

• Download my N8N + OpenWebUI integration directly on the Open WebUI site. (more instructions below)

What's included

✅ Self-hosted n8n - Low-code platform with over 400 integrations and advanced AI components

✅ Supabase - Open source database as a service - most widely used database for AI agents

✅ Open WebUI - ChatGPT-like interface to privately interact with your models and N8N agents

✅ Flowise - No/low code AI agent builder that pairs very well with n8n

✅ Qdrant - Open source, high performance vector store with an comprehensive API. Even though you can use Supabase for RAG, this was kept unlike Postgres since it's faster than Supabase so sometimes is the better option.

✅ SearXNG - Open source, free internet metasearch engine which aggregates results from up to 229 search services. Users are neither tracked nor profiled, hence the fit with this AI package.

✅ Caddy - Managed HTTPS/TLS for custom domains

✅ Langfuse - Open source LLM engineering platform for agent observability

✅ Crawl4ai - Flexible web crawler designed for AI data extraction workflows.

✅ Prometheus - Open source monitoring and alerting toolkit.

✅ Grafana - Open source platform for monitoring and observability, often used with Prometheus.

Installation

Prerequisites before Installation

1. Domain Name: You need a registered domain name (e.g., yourdomain.com).

2. DNS Configuration: Before running the installation script, you must configure the following DNS A-record(s) for your domain, pointing to the public IP address of the server where you intend to install the n8n ecosystem. Replace yourdomain.com with your actual domain:

   • Wildcard Record (Required): A *.yourdomain.com -> YOUR_SERVER_IP
   • Apex/Root Domain Record (Recommended, if you plan to use yourdomain.com directly for any service or a landing page): A yourdomain.com -> YOUR_SERVER_IP

3. Server: Minimum server system requirements: Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64, 8 GB Memory / 4 Intel vCPUs / 60 GB Disk.

Running the Installer

The recommended way to install is using the provided main installation script. Connect to your server via SSH and run:

git clone https://github.com/kossakovsky/n8n-installer && cd n8n-installer && bash ./scripts/install.sh

This single command automates the entire setup process, including:

• System preparation (updates, firewall configuration with UFW, Fail2Ban setup for brute-force protection).
• Docker and Docker Compose installation.
• Generation of the .env configuration file with necessary secrets and your domain settings.
• Launching all the services using Docker Compose.

During the installation, the script will prompt you for:

1. Your primary domain name (Required, e.g., yourdomain.com). This is the domain for which you've configured the wildcard DNS A-record.
2. Your email address (Required, used for service logins like Flowise, Supabase dashboard, Grafana, etc., and crucial for Let's Encrypt SSL certificates).
3. An optional OpenAI API key (Not required, used by Supabase AI features and Crawl4ai if provided. Press Enter to skip).
4. Whether you want to import ~300 ready-made n8n community workflows (y/n, Optional. This can take around 20-30 minutes depending on your server and network).

Upon successful completion, the script will display a summary report containing the access URLs and credentials for the deployed services.

Note

The install.sh script handles the creation and population of the .env file based on .env.example and the information you provide. You typically do not need to manually create or edit this file unless making advanced customizations after the initial setup.

The installation script handles the generation of these secrets automatically.

⚡️ Quick start and usage

The services will be available at the following hostnames (replace yourdomain.com with your actual domain):

• n8n: n8n.yourdomain.com
• Open WebUI: webui.yourdomain.com
• Flowise: flowise.yourdomain.com
• Supabase: supabase.yourdomain.com
• Langfuse: langfuse.yourdomain.com
• Grafana: grafana.yourdomain.com
• SearXNG: searxng.yourdomain.com
• Prometheus: prometheus.yourdomain.com

With your n8n instance, you'll have access to over 400 integrations and a suite of basic and advanced AI nodes such as AI Agent, Text classifier, and Information Extractor nodes. Remember to use Qdrant or Supabase as your vector store. If you wish to use language models, you can configure the n8n instance, assuming you have an LLM instance running separately.

Note

This starter kit is designed to help you get started with workflows. While it's not fully optimized for production environments, it This installer is designed to help you get started quickly with n8n and related tools. While it's not fully optimized for production environments, it combines robust components that work well together for proof-of-concept projects. You can customize it to meet your specific needs

Upgrading

To update all containers to their latest versions (n8n, Open WebUI, etc.), run these commands: and pull the latest changes from the repository, use the update script:

sudo bash ./scripts/update.sh

This script will:

1. Pull the latest changes from the Git repository.
2. Stop the currently running services using docker compose down.
3. Pull the latest Docker images for all services using docker compose pull.
4. Ask if you want to re-run the n8n workflow import (useful if new workflows were added).
5. Restart the services using the scripts/04_run_services.sh script.

Troubleshooting

Here are solutions to common issues you might encounter:

Supabase Issues

• Supabase Pooler Restarting: If the supabase-pooler container keeps restarting itself, follow the instructions in this GitHub issue.

• Supabase Analytics Startup Failure: If the supabase-analytics container fails to start after changing your Postgres password, delete the folder supabase/docker/volumes/db/data.

• Supabase Service Unavailable - Make sure you don't have an "@" character in your Postgres password! If the connection to the kong container is working (the container logs say it is receiving requests from n8n) but n8n says it cannot connect, this is generally the problem from what the community has shared. Other characters might not be allowed too, the @ symbol is just the one I know for sure!

👓 Recommended reading

n8n is full of useful content for getting started quickly with its AI concepts and nodes. If you run into an issue, go to support.

• AI agents for developers: from theory to practice with n8n
• Tutorial: Build an AI workflow in n8n
• Langchain Concepts in n8n
• Demonstration of key differences between agents and chains
• What are vector databases?

🎥 Video walkthrough

• Cole's Guide to the AI Starter Kit

🛍️ More AI templates

For more AI workflow ideas, visit the official n8n AI template gallery. From each workflow, select the Use workflow button to automatically import the workflow into your n8n instance.

Learn AI key concepts

• AI Agent Chat
• AI chat with any data source (using the n8n workflow too)
• Chat with OpenAI Assistant (by adding a memory)
• Use an open-source LLM (via HuggingFace)
• Chat with PDF docs using AI (quoting sources)
• AI agent that can scrape webpages

AI Templates

• Tax Code Assistant
• Breakdown Documents into Study Notes with MistralAI and Qdrant
• Financial Documents Assistant using Qdrant and Mistral.ai
• Recipe Recommendations with Qdrant and Mistral

Example AI templates (May require external APIs or separate model setup)

Tips & tricks

Accessing Files on the Server

The starter kit will create a shared folder (by default, The installer will create a shared folder (by default, located in the same directory) which is mounted to the n8n container and allows n8n to access files on the server's disk. This folder within the n8n container is located at /data/shared -- this is the path you'll need to use in nodes that interact with the server's filesystem.

Nodes that interact with the server's filesystem

• Read/Write Files from Disk
• Local File Trigger
• Execute Command

📜 License

This project (originally created by the n8n team, link at the top of the README) is licensed under the Apache License 2.0 - see the LICENSE file for details.