Community node with WebSocket dependency — path to verification?

Questions
1

Hi everyone,

I recently built and published n8n-nodes-supabase-realtime, a community trigger
node that connects to Supabase Realtime and fires workflows on INSERT, UPDATE,
and DELETE database events via WebSocket.

npm: https://www.npmjs.com/package/n8n-nodes-supabase-realtime
GitHub: GitHub - Rancha997/n8n-nodes-supabase-realtime: n8n community trigger node for Supabase Realtime — fires workflows on INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE · GitHub

The node has been getting traction — there are several forum threads requesting
exactly this functionality, and I built it to fill that gap.

The issue: when I run npx @n8n/scan-community-package it fails with:

error Require of ‘@supabase/supabase-js’ is not allowed.
n8n Cloud does not allow community nodes with dependencies

The node requires @supabase/supabase-js to establish a persistent WebSocket
connection using the Phoenix channel protocol that Supabase Realtime uses.
There’s no way to implement this without an external WebSocket client library.

I looked into whether there’s a native helper available — I found PR #13229
(WebSocket Client Trigger Node) which was opened by the n8n team but closed
without merging. This means there’s currently no built-in way for community
nodes to establish outbound WebSocket connections.

This creates a gap: the no-dependencies policy blocks community nodes from
filling functionality that n8n itself hasn’t shipped yet.

Is there an exception process for well-audited, widely-used packages like
@supabase/supabase-js? Or any plans to expose a WebSocket helper to community
nodes? Happy to do whatever it takes to get this verified.

3

@Darko_Rancic there’s no exception process right now, the no-external-deps policy is hard. your best bet to ship this on cloud is to flip it — use a Supabase database webhook (pg_net extension) that POSTs to an n8n webhook on every table change, no websocket needed

enable pg_net in your Supabase project, create a database webhook on your table pointing to the n8n webhook URL, and you get INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE events without any external dependency.

4

@achamm Thanks for the quick response and the clear explanation.

Understood on the no-exceptions policy. The pg_net approach is a valid workaround but it’s more of a setup pattern than a node.

For now I’ll keep the node published for self-hosted users where it works well. If n8n ever exposes a native WebSocket helper to community nodes the rewrite would be straightforward.

Thanks again.