Cannot start or save my workflow

Questions
1

I cannot activate or save my workflow. When I try to save or activate my workflow I get the error

Workflow could not be activated:

There was a problem activating the workflow: “Unknown alias: nul”

I believe it is a result of my open ai node outputting null values:

[

{

“index”: 0,

“message”: {

“role”: “assistant”,

“content”: {

“Profile Information”: {

“Name”: “Peter SORENSEN”,

“Instagram URL”: “https://www.instagram.com/pete.sore17/”,

“Profile Description”: “As 2024 comes to a close here’s to reminiscing on the lessons learned and experiences attained, to those lost and to those who were gained.”,

“Username”: “Peter Sorensen (@pete.sore17)”

},

“<>”: “Irrelevant”,

“<>”: “The profile description does not indicate involvement in endurance sports or participation in races, nor does it offer any clues about Peter’s potential interest in endurance supplements.”

},

“refusal”: null,

“annotations”: [

]

},

“logprobs”: null,

“finish_reason”: “stop”

},

2

This is an internal n8n validation error that occurs when:

  • There are malformed data structures (e.g., empty or undefined keys).
  • Or when a misinterpreted expression generates an unexpected value such as null where an identifier is expected (e.g., node alias, variable name, connection parameter).

Clear execution data before saving:
Open the node’s pre-execution panel (the OpenAI node).
Click “Clear execution data” or disable the save output option for the node (Save Data → “Never” or similar).
Then try saving/activating the workflow again.

Avoid invalid keys in the OpenAI response: Make sure the OpenAI prompt doesn’t produce objects with keys like <>, empty keys, or null as the key.

Don’t use null as aliases or node names: Sometimes, n8n interprets parts of structures as aliases for nodes or variables. If any part contains “alias”: null, it can cause errors when interpreting the reference.