The discussion revolves around integrating n8n, an open-source automation tool similar to Zapier and IFTTT, with Discourse to enable advanced automation workflows. sunjam initiated the thread by highlighting n8n’s potential for automating posts, notifications, and integrations with services like Matrix, Mastodon, Trello, and RSS feeds — especially useful for tag-triggered actions and group moderation. pfaffman asked whether n8n currently supports Discourse, prompting sunjam to elaborate on use cases such as chat integrations, cross-platform topic federation, and two-way syncs (e.g., Slack ↔ Discourse). A major milestone was announced in post 4: Harshil built a dedicated Discourse node for n8n, enabling actions like creating/updating categories, users, groups, and posts. Franz1 suggested syncing Discourse activity (e.g., new threads or replies) to Mautic for user engagement tracking. satonotdead confirmed plans to adopt n8n for communication workflows after phasing out Mailerlite. bitmage emphasized leveraging Discourse’s built-in RSS feeds with n8n’s RSS trigger node, noting the flexibility of the HTTP node for unsupported API calls. They praised n8n’s open-source nature as aligning with Discourse’s ethos of data ownership and avoiding proprietary platform risks. The thread showcases community enthusiasm for expanding Discourse’s automation capabilities via n8n’s customizable, code-friendly interface.
Continuing the discussion from How to make requests to the Discourse API with Zapier:
Open source variation of Zapier and IFTTT, similar to Node-Red and TriggerHappy, which is easy to use and currently supports about 150 apps. Could be a useful way to automate posting to a particular topic / category / group or perhaps sending custom notifications. Linked site includes all documentation for writing custom integrations. Curious on potential ways to implement this with Discourse.
Does it currently support discourse?
Is there a particular thing that you’d like to do with it?
I was curious on what others think… my mind has been concerned with chat integrations based on tags triggering actions, and groups moderating things.
Looking over n8n current integrations, a few things come to mind. This post on integrating IFTTT is really helpful for triggering Posts, Topics and PM’s.
It would be awesome if a trigger could also relate to tags.
Integration might currently allow:
One of the most interesting aspects of automation is it allows 2-way communication. Trello could be running in addition to the Kanban component on Discourse, continuously communicating. Or a conversation mirroring between Slack and Discourse. Hope this helps get the ideas flowing.
Big thanks to Harshil! You may now use:
Create
Create a category
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Update a category
Add
Create a user to group
Remove
Remove user from group
Create
Create a user
Get
Get a user
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Get all users
Create
Create a post
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Get a post
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Get all posts
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Update a post
Create
Create a group
Get
Get a group
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Get all groups
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Update a group
One very interesting thing to do would be to transfer to Mautic information about activity on Discourse, to identify users that that put more energy into Discourse. So, for example opening a new thread or replying would result in a transfer of this information to Mautic.
I understand that’s possible with N8N. I will get into this workflow soon because we get rid of Mailerlite and have plans to integrate and simplify out communication soon.
One obvious way to use n8n is with Discourse’s pre-existing RSS feeds.
I use RSS as a way to set up an active search for terms that I’m interested in across different platforms. RSS is the one protocol that pretty much everything speaks, or can be translated into ( e.g. rss-bridge).
It looks like someone has built an n8n node for Discourse, so that will probably be pretty easy to use. And as the documentation says, if any API calls you’re expecting aren’t supported you can always drop down to the HTTP Node and make REST calls if you know what you’re doing.
I’ve used n8n for marketing automations and I think it’s a pretty decent tool. I’m happy that it’s open source, which I think makes a much stronger case for owning your intellectual property, i.e. not building out a huge part of your business logic on a propriety platform subject to rate changes and arbitrary deplatforming. So there might be some common sentiment with those in the Discourse community.