RFC — n8n Homelab Automation Research
Researched 2026-04-06. Current n8n: v2.13.2 on LXC 120.
Current State
4 workflows today — all lightweight webhook proxies:
- Service Alerts -> Matrix — Gatus outage -> Matrix room
- Charlotte Weather Proxy — Open-Meteo -> Glance widget
- Anime Seasonal Proxy — Jikan API -> Glance widget
- qBittorrent VPN Check — verifies Gluetun routing
Tier 1 — Low Effort, Immediate Payoff
Proxmox LXC Health Monitor -> ntfy
Poll the Proxmox API on a schedule. Detect stopped LXCs, high CPU/RAM/disk usage, or ZFS pool issues. Push ntfy alerts. 20 LXCs on a single node with no mirrors — early warning is critical.
Community reference: Medium - Proxmox VM monitoring with n8n
Cloudflare DDNS Updater
*.eva-00.network wildcard points to home IP. If ISP changes it, everything breaks. Simple cron checks public IP and updates Cloudflare if it drifts.
Community reference: GitHub - cloudflare-ddns-n8n
Docker Container Auto-Restart
Poll Docker on each LXC (or use Alloy metrics). If a container exits unexpectedly, restart it and send an ntfy notification. Self-healing baseline.
Community reference: Virtualization Howto - n8n homelab automation
HDD/SSD Health Digest
6+ disks (nvme0n1, sda-sdh) including the 10.9TB WD Gold and 4TB Crucial SSD holding all media. Run smartctl over SSH daily, parse SMART data, push ntfy morning digest. Flag reallocated sectors or temperature spikes.
Community reference: noted.lol - HDD health alerts with n8n and ntfy
Tier 2 — Medium Effort, High Impact
Open WebUI <-> n8n Bridge
Long-term goal is to interact with the homelab via AI (see project_openwebui_homelab_goal memory). Well-documented community pattern: - Install a custom Open WebUI function that routes messages to an n8n webhook - n8n processes the request through tool-calling workflows (Proxmox API, Docker API, Vault API, Forgejo API, etc.) - Response flows back to the chat
Type in Open WebUI: "what LXCs are running?" or "restart the Jellyfin container" and get it done through natural language -> Ollama -> n8n -> API calls.
Community references: - Pondhouse Data - Open WebUI + n8n - n8n community - Open WebUI with n8n agents
Smart Alert Routing
Replace the current "everything -> Matrix" pattern. n8n can triage: - Critical (service down 5+ min) -> ntfy priority 5 + Matrix - Warning (high resource usage) -> ntfy priority 3 - Info (container restarted, backup completed) -> Matrix only - Time-aware: suppress non-critical alerts overnight
Community reference: Medium - Prometheus incident response with n8n
Docker Image Update Approval via ntfy
Check for available image updates across all Docker services. Send ntfy notification with action buttons (Approve / Skip). On approval, pull + recreate the container. Controlled updates without full Watchtower risk.
Community reference: n8n workflow template - Docker updates with Telegram approval
Database Backup Pipeline
PostgreSQL (MediaManager, Paperless), MariaDB (Grimmory/RomM/Shoko), and ~6 SQLite databases. Scheduled n8n workflow: pg_dump / mysqldump / copy SQLite files, compress, store on Filedump LXC (10.9TB), send completion notification. PBS is planned but doesn't exist yet — this fills the gap now.
Community reference: Mustafa.net - n8n homelab automation
Tier 3 — More Complex, Strategic Value
Vault Secret Rotation
n8n has a community HashiCorp Vault node (n8n-nodes-hashi-vault). Automate rotation: generate new secret -> update Vault -> trigger Forgejo Actions deploy -> service picks up new creds.
Community references: - Infralovers - n8n secrets management - Medium - n8n + Vault automated secret rotation
Unified Audit Log Aggregator
Pull events from Forgejo API, Vault audit (once enabled), PocketID, Proxmox, and Caddy access logs. Normalize into a standard format and ship to Loki with a dedicated label. Single-pane security audit trail — relevant to open security gaps (SG-003 through SG-010).
Paperless-ngx Intake Pipeline
When Paperless-AI companion is deployed: new document arrives -> Ollama classifies/tags it -> Paperless applies tags -> ntfy notifies what was filed. Extends existing Ollama + Paperless stack.
Karakeep Auto-Tagger via RSS
Monitor RSS feeds. When articles match keywords, auto-save to Karakeep with tags via its API. Feed it content automatically instead of manual bookmarking.
Forgejo Actions Status Watcher
Current action log -> Loki shipping is a fragile Python cron script on LXC 100. n8n could replace it: poll Forgejo API for workflow runs, detect failures, send ntfy alerts with links to the failed run, optionally trigger a retry.
Other Community Use Cases Worth Knowing
| Use Case | Complexity | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Proxmox AI agent (natural language -> API calls) | Medium | n8n blog |
| Plex/Jellyfin play -> throttle qBittorrent | Low | Prevent buffering during playback |
| New media added -> ntfy notification | Low | Jellyfin webhook -> n8n -> ntfy |
| AI-summarized RSS digest via Ollama | Low-Medium | Daily email/notification with summaries |
| Certificate automation via Vault | High | TLS cert issuance, renewal, distribution |
| n8n workflow self-backup to disk | Low | Export all workflows on cron, store versioned |
| Self-healing via IPMI/WoL | Medium | XDA - self-healing homelab |
| RSS -> Karakeep/Wallabag auto-save | Low | Auto-curate reading list |
Recommended Priority Order
Given single Proxmox node, no backup solution yet, flat network, 20 LXCs — reliability and observability first:
- Proxmox health monitor + ntfy — one disk failure from a bad day
- HDD/SSD SMART monitoring — same reason
- Database backups to Filedump — storage exists, just need automation
- Cloudflare DDNS — trivial setup, prevents total outage
- Open WebUI <-> n8n bridge — directly serves long-term AI homelab goal