N8n Cli

This wraps n8n's REST API in a composable CLI that auto-switches to JSON when piped, making it easy to script workflow management or chain commands together. You get full CRUD on workflows, executions, credentials, and data tables, plus filtering, jq-style extraction, and the ability to pipe workflow JSON through standard tools for modifications. The credential schema command is handy for discovering required fields before you create one. It's built for both interactive use and shell scripting, with global flags for format control and debugging. If you're managing n8n instances programmatically or need to automate workflow deployments, this beats clicking through the UI or writing raw curl commands.

skills.sh installs: 209
GitHub stars: 210K
last updated: Aug 21, 2026

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Install

$ npx -y skills add n8n-io/n8n --skill n8n-cli --agent claude-code

Installs into .claude/skills of the current project.

Files

n8n CLI

The n8n-cli command-line tool manages an n8n instance via its REST API. It auto-detects piped output and switches to JSON, making it composable for scripts and LLM tool use.

Setup

# Interactive login (saves to ~/.n8n-cli/config.json)
n8n-cli login

# Or configure directly
n8n-cli config set-url https://my-instance.n8n.cloud
n8n-cli config set-api-key n8n_api_...

# Or use environment variables (no config file needed)
export N8N_URL=https://my-instance.n8n.cloud
export N8N_API_KEY=n8n_api_...

Global Flags

Every command supports these flags:

Flag	Short	Description
`--url`	`-u`	Instance URL (overrides config/env)
`--apiKey`	`-k`	API key (overrides config/env)
`--format`	`-f`	Output format: `table`, `json`, `id-only`
`--json`		Shorthand for `--format=json`
`--jq`		jq-style filter (implies `--json`), e.g. `'.[0].id'`, `'.[].name'`
`--quiet`	`-q`	Suppress output
`--no-header`		Hide table headers (for `awk`/`cut` parsing)
`--debug`		Print HTTP details to stderr