Agent skill · software engineering · sickn33
n8n-error-handling
Design visible, structured, recoverable n8n failures using error outputs, retries, Error Trigger workflows, and HTTP error responses.
Why this skill is useful
Adds specific error handling patterns and structured workflows for n8n that the AI wouldn't reliably generate on its own.
What it needs
Requires n8n installed locally. About 12k tokens when loaded. Last updated 2026-08-07. 44,571 stars on the source repository.
What this skill does
n8n Error Handling When to Use Use this skill for unattended workflows, webhook/API response contracts, retry design, error outputs, Error Trigger workflows, alerting, or any path where failure must be visible and recoverable. Make retries bounded and idempotent, especially for sends, payments, and writes. Redact credentials, personal data, request bodies, and stack details from caller-facing responses and alerts; expose only the minimum diagnostic context required. By default, when an n8n node throws, the whole workflow halts. For an interactive run you're watching, that's fine — you see the red node and fix it. For anything unattended (a webhook API, a cron job, a queue worker, an agent tool), it's the wrong default: the caller gets a timeout or an empty 500, the operator gets no alert, and the symptom is "the integration just stopped working" with no log and no clue. This skill is about making failures loud, structured, and recoverable — and, best case, self-healing so transient blips never reach a human at all. The two ideas that prevent most silent failures: Per-node error outputs — a node's failure routes down a second output you control, instead of killing the run. A workflow-level error workflow — a catch-all that fires for anything that escapes per-node handling (timeouts, crashes between nodes, unwired failures). --- When you actually need this Workflow shape Error handling posture --- --- Webhook / API (anything with Respond to Webhook) Required. Every fallible node's error output wired; status code matches cause. Scheduled / cron / queue worker / agent tool (unattended) Required. A workflow-level error workflow, plus retryOnFail on network nodes. Internal one-off you run and watch yourself Optional. Default onError: "stopWorkflow" is fine — you'll see the red node and re-run. The dividing line: if anyone other than you sees the output — a downstream system, an end user, an on-call engineer — the failure has to be handled, not swallowed. …
How to use it
Reference it in AdaL, Claude Code, Cursor or any coding agent — nothing to install:
@skills sickn33/n8n-error-handling