There should be an API call that returns the current running version of N8N. Probably plus some other info, like versions of custom npm and pip packages that are installed/available in the code module. Maybe add this info to the audit API?
My use case:
Want to programmatically monitor when I need to upgrade my self-hosted cluster.
I think it would be beneficial to add this because:
Staying up to date with feature and bug releases is important!
If you wanted the version you could extract it from the /metrics endpoint if enabled or from /rest/settings which also gives you some more infomation on the settings you are using.
The /metrics endpoint is oddly in the correct format for its intended purpose, It is nomrally used with Prometheus for monitoring. Maybe a similar output in json could be useful for other monitoring tools though.