SOLVED: Course 1 : Hacker News, "unable to get local issuer certificate"

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1

Hello community,

I’m working on the n8n course and ran into this error when testing out the node to capture 10 Hacker news articles over automation:

”unable to get local issuer certificate”

{
“errorMessage”: “unable to get local issuer certificate”,
“errorDetails”: {
“rawErrorMessage”: [
“unable to get local issuer certificate”
],
“httpCode”: “UNABLE_TO_GET_ISSUER_CERT_LOCALLY”
},
“n8nDetails”: {
“nodeName”: “Get many items”,
“nodeType”: “n8n-nodes-base.hackerNews”,
“nodeVersion”: 1,
“resource”: “all”,
“operation”: “getAll”,
“time”: “1/15/2026, 10:14:43 AM”,
“n8nVersion”: “2.3.5 (Self Hosted)”,
“binaryDataMode”: “filesystem”,
“stackTrace”: [
“NodeApiError: unable to get local issuer certificate”,
" at ExecuteContext.hackerNewsApiRequest (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/n8n/node_modules/.pnpm/n8n-nodes-base@file+packages+nodes-base_@[email protected]_asn1.js@5_8da18263ca0574b0db58d4fefd8173ce/node_modules/n8n-nodes-base/nodes/HackerNews/GenericFunctions.ts:32:9)“,
" at processTicksAndRejections (node:internal/process/task_queues:105:5)”,
" at ExecuteContext.execute (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/n8n/node_modules/.pnpm/n8n-nodes-base@file+packages+nodes-base_@[email protected]_asn1.js@5_8da18263ca0574b0db58d4fefd8173ce/node_modules/n8n-nodes-base/nodes/HackerNews/HackerNews.node.ts:335:21)“,
" at WorkflowExecute.executeNode (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/n8n/node_modules/.pnpm/n8n-core@file+packages+core_@[email protected]_@[email protected]_ec37920eb95917b28efaa783206b20f3/node_modules/n8n-core/src/execution-engine/workflow-execute.ts:1045:8)”,
" at WorkflowExecute.runNode (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/n8n/node_modules/.pnpm/n8n-core@file+packages+core_@[email protected]_@[email protected]_ec37920eb95917b28efaa783206b20f3/node_modules/n8n-core/src/execution-engine/workflow-execute.ts:1226:11)“,
" at /usr/local/lib/node_modules/n8n/node_modules/.pnpm/n8n-core@file+packages+core_@[email protected]_@[email protected]_ec37920eb95917b28efaa783206b20f3/node_modules/n8n-core/src/execution-engine/workflow-execute.ts:1662:27”,
" at /usr/local/lib/node_modules/n8n/node_modules/.pnpm/n8n-core@file+packages+core_@[email protected]_@[email protected]_ec37920eb95917b28efaa783206b20f3/node_modules/n8n-core/src/execution-engine/workflow-execute.ts:2297:11"
]
}
}

This is a locally hosted instance through Docker on MacOS (26.2 (25C56)).
Please let me know if I have configured this instance incorrectly in Docker, I’m totally new to Docker.

2

Solution found! Commenting here for anyone else that runs into this. We utilize Zscaler for network security and I have been doing some non-prod learning on n8n.
I created the Volume in Docker in Terminal with this command from the n8n course:

docker volume create n8n_data

docker run -it --rm
–name n8n
-p 5678:5678
-e GENERIC_TIMEZONE=“CST6CDT”
-e TZ=“CST6CDT”
-e N8N_ENFORCE_SETTINGS_FILE_PERMISSIONS=true
-e N8N_RUNNERS_ENABLED=true
-v n8n_data:/home/node/.n8n

docker.n8n.io/n8nio/n8n

The fix was re-running the docker instance from Terminal with:
-e NODE_TLS_REJECT_UNAUTHORIZED=0 \

Added to the command, so the whole thing looks like this:
docker run -it --rm
–name n8n
-p 5678:5678
-e GENERIC_TIMEZONE=“CST6CDT”
-e TZ=“CST6CDT”
-e N8N_ENFORCE_SETTINGS_FILE_PERMISSIONS=true
-e N8N_RUNNERS_ENABLED=true
-e NODE_TLS_REJECT_UNAUTHORIZED=0
-v n8n_data:/home/node/.n8n

Issue resolved and able to pull articles from Hacker News.

docker.n8n.io/n8nio/n8n