🛠️ Auto n8n updater (Docker)

How it works

This workflow automates the process of checking for and applying updates to a self-hosted n8n instance running on Docker. It runs on a schedule, checks for new versions, summarizes the release notes with AI, and asks for your approval via Telegram before updating.

1. Scheduled Check: The workflow runs hourly, triggered by a Schedule node.
2. Version Discovery:
   • It first confirms it's running in a Docker environment.
   • It uses SSH to connect to the host machine and inspects the running n8n container to find its current version tag (e.g., latest or next).
   • It then queries the Docker Hub API to compare the image digest (a unique ID for an image version) of the running version against the latest available version for that tag.
3. Update Detection: If the digests do not match, it means a new image has been pushed for your version tag (e.g., a new latest image is available), and an update is needed.
4. AI-Powered Release Notes:
   • It fetches the official release notes for the new version from the GitHub API.
   • An AI model (LLM) summarizes these technical notes into a concise, human-readable overview of the key features and fixes.
5. Manual Approval: It sends a message to a Telegram chat with the AI-generated summary and two buttons: "✅ Update" and "❌ Ignore". The workflow then pauses and waits for your response.
6. Execute Update: If you approve the update, the workflow uses SSH to run a docker compose command on your server, which pulls the new image, stops the old containers, and starts the new ones.

Set up steps

Setup time: ~5-10 minutes

1. SSH Credentials:
   • Go to Credentials and create a new SSH credential with the username, host, and password/private key for the server where your n8n Docker instance is running.
   • Select this credential in the Get n8n Current Version and Update Docker nodes.
2. Telegram Bot Credentials:
   • Create a Telegram Bot and get its API token.
   • Go to Credentials and create a new Telegram credential with your bot's token.
   • Select this credential in the Send a text message node.
3. AI Model Credentials:
   • Ensure you have credentials for an AI provider (like Google AI, OpenAI, etc.) set up.
   • Select your desired credential in the Google Gemini Chat Model node (or replace it with your preferred LLM node).
4. Configure Paths and Commands:
   • Open the Docker Path node. Set the docker_path to the absolute path of your docker-compose.yml file on the server (e.g., /root/n8n).
   • If you use workers, adjust the worker_command to include the correct --scale argument for your setup. If not, you can leave it blank.
5. Set Your Chat ID:
   • Open the Approve Update Telegram node and enter your personal Telegram Chat ID in the Chat ID field. This ensures the approval message is sent to you.
6. Activate the workflow. It will now check for updates every hour.

To enable fully automatic updates (without manual approval): Delete the nodes from Get n8n Releases to Approved ? and connect the Needs Update ? node directly to the Update Docker node.