When building workflows, I constantly encounter the error “[Error: Unpin node ‘123456’ and execute]”.
This is extremely frustrating. The previous node has already executed successfully, and its output consists solely of text—there isn’t even a single image involved. I pinned the data to avoid re-execution, but now whenever I try to add new nodes downstream, this error message appears. Even after I unpin the earlier node, re-edit its output, and re-pin it, the downstream nodes still show the same error.
That particular upstream node calls an open-source video generation model, and each execution takes about twenty minutes. Now, out of nowhere, this “[Error: Unpin node ‘123456’ and execute]” message forces me to re-run the entire node again just to edit downstream nodes—this drastically reduces my workflow efficiency.
I understand you might not appreciate me comparing n8n to other tools, but please allow me to share a brief observation for the sake of improving n8n: before using n8n, I used Dify, which persistently remembers each node’s last output—even after refreshing or closing the browser tab. This greatly boosted my development efficiency. In contrast, the current behavior in n8n is driving me crazy.
I sincerely hope the n8n team can address this issue. Additionally, if you could also improve the related limitation—“Workflow execution file too large to pin data”—or increase the maximum allowed size for pinning execution data, that would be even better.
I genuinely love n8n—it offers more freedom and higher ceilings—but it currently lacks some user-friendly touches. I hope the n8n team will take this feedback seriously.