AI-powered research workflows

:rocket: Built AI-powered research workflows with n8n โ€” what used to take weeks or months, now takes under 10 minutes.

Iโ€™ve been experimenting with building workflows to automate country-level research. The system can now collect 40+ data points per country, pulling from multiple sources and formats.

Hereโ€™s what the workflows can do:

:globe_with_meridians: Call APIs from sources like World Bank and Our World in Data
:page_facing_up: Upload PDFs and auto-summarize the content
:bar_chart: Process CSVs to fetch and format key data
:spider_web: For non-API sources: scrape web pages via HTTP requests + CSS selectors
:robot: Use AI prompts to generate research summaries from the collected data
:card_file_box: Push everything into a central database for analysis

Some key takeaways from this build:

  • Prompt engineering still matters โ€“ You need to guide the AI with the right questions and credible sources.
  • Human input is essential โ€“ Local context checks are still important for accuracy.
  • Documentation is non-negotiable โ€“ As workflows grow, clearly documenting each nodeโ€™s logic saves hours down the road.

Had a lot of fun experimenting with the logic, and Iโ€™m excited about how much more scalable research can be with the right workflows in place.

1 Like