A Journey of a Thousand Custom Nodes

At Trade Republic, n8n isn't just a tool for wiring up webhooks, it's the backbone of how internal systems talk to each other. But once you go beyond simple HTTP requests, you hit the same walls repeatedly: discoverability breaks down, patterns get copy-pasted across workflows and quietly go stale, and nobody remembers where the "canonical" version lived. Add internal APIs that don't behave like tidy REST services, long polling, human-in-the-loop steps, and repeated boilerplate for logging and error handling, and the cracks show.

In this talk, Trade Republic's n8n platform team walks through how they solved that problem: building custom nodes at scale. They'll cover why they chose custom nodes over custom workflows, and how they automated the boring part, generating nodes directly from internal OpenAPI specs, treating each as just another generated API client.

Finally, they'll dig into the internal SDK built on top: instrumentation for free (logging, tracing, auth), encapsulation of repeated patterns, and ergonomic conventions that make nodes easier to write and read.

• Understand the common failure modes of custom node sprawl: lost discoverability, stale copy-pasted patterns, and no clear canonical version
• Learn why Trade Republic chose building custom nodes over custom workflows to solve internal integration problems
• See how nodes can be auto-generated directly from internal OpenAPI specs, treating each as a generated API client
• Discover what an internal SDK for node development can provide for free: logging, tracing, auth, and parameter validation
• Identify the trade-offs of building on custom nodes: real friction, but real flexibility to shape the platform around your organization's needs