The repetitive task you do by hand
Copying a form into a spreadsheet, chasing an unanswered quote, filing attachments: you build it once and it runs forever. That is where the time comes back.
Operations
You need a few reliable workflows, not 7,000 connectors.
Zapier costs US$30–69 / mo, which is US$360–828 a year. You have two paths:
Option 1 · Install
n8n is your business's engine room. You draw a chain of steps on a canvas (when a form is submitted, create the CRM record, ping Slack, send the welcome email) and it runs without you, day and night. Over 400 services come already wired in, and when none fits, you call any API. The difference with Zapier and Make: you can run it on your own machine. Where Zapier counts your tasks and bills every trigger, your server counts nothing. And for automations that call Claude, you plug in your own key instead of buying their AI credits.
| Criterion | n8n | Zapier / Make |
|---|---|---|
| Price | US$0, you just pay your server | €9 to €26 a month, then more |
| Volume | Unlimited, it is your machine | 750 tasks/month on Zapier Pro |
| Your data | Never leaves your server | Passes through them at every step |
| Custom code | A JavaScript or Python node when visual falls short | Restricted, and reserved for higher tiers |
| The AI inside | Your own Claude key, at cost | AI credits billed on top |
Two ways in: on your machine to try it out, or on a server so your automations keep running when your computer is off. Start with the first.
Download it from docker.com, install it, and open it once. It is the engine that will run n8n on your machine.
It installs n8n from the official repository, starts it and checks that the interface responds:
Install n8n on my machine (the open source workflow automation tool, GitHub repo n8n-io/n8n) with Docker, following the official documentation docs.n8n.io. Create the working folder, write the docker-compose.yml with a volume that keeps my workflows between restarts, start it, and check that the interface responds at http://localhost:5678. Then explain how to create my first workflow. Explain each step simply, I'm a beginner.
Review the GitHub repository and check whether it is safe to install given my machine and my infrastructure. Ask me as many questions as possible, using widgets, to clarify my request and be as precise as you can.Open http://localhost:5678, create your account, and start with a simple, useful case: a submitted form that triggers an email. Once that works, the rest follows on its own.
On your machine, your automations stop when you close your laptop. Ask Claude to deploy it to a server or hosting platform, with a real domain, the day you actually depend on it.
Copying a form into a spreadsheet, chasing an unanswered quote, filing attachments: you build it once and it runs forever. That is where the time comes back.
An email arrives, Claude reads it, sorts it, drafts the reply and saves it. n8n is the pipe connecting the intelligence to your everyday tools, with your own API key.
You install n8n at their company, build their automations, and their team can read and maintain them because it is visual. You bill the work, not a running subscription.
Built with: TypeScript 92.2% · Vue 6.3% · JavaScript 0.7%
Public GitHub repository data, captured on October 8, 2026.
Option 2 · Build
This build is aimed at an operations team running a known set of webhook-driven automations. The goal: receive events, transform data, and run a short sequence of dependable actions. If you need more than that, keep paying — building it yourself is about owning a tool shaped exactly like your workflow, not re-creating a venture-funded roadmap.
Same build, different logo: this v1 also replaces n8n and Pipedream — they all solve the same core job.
The prompt below builds a single version with what actually gets used. Everything else is left out on purpose.
| What the prompt builds | webhook trigger, transform step, http action, linear workflows, run history, retries, secrets, replay |
|---|---|
| What stays out | 7,000-connector marketplace, oauth for everything, polling triggers |
Workflow, Step, SecretReference, Run, StepRun
webhooks, HTTP APIs, email, Queues
Workers, Workflows, D1
Redact secrets from logs, sign incoming hooks where possible, and make retries idempotent.
Do not create a public connector marketplace, branching canvas, arbitrary code execution, or polling triggers.
Pick your stack, copy the prompt and hand it to your coding agent (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex…).
You are building a production-ready software product named “Whenhook”, a deliberately focused alternative to Zapier. Build a complete, usable vertical slice—not a landing page, static mockup, or disconnected collection of components.
WORKING AGREEMENT
Before you write any implementation code, put together a short technical plan naming the routes or pages, server actions or endpoints, data tables, key state transitions, authorization boundaries, background jobs, and external adapters. When something conflicts, side with the narrow audience and the non-goals below. Choose a small, readable architecture over speculative abstraction, but never skip persistence, validation, error handling, or tests.
PRODUCT BRIEF
Primary user: an operations team running a known set of webhook-driven automations.
Primary outcome: receive events, transform data, and run a short sequence of dependable actions.
Product principle: optimize the exact workflow below instead of copying the full breadth of Zapier. A first-time user should understand what to do from the interface itself, without a tour or documentation.
END-TO-END USER JOURNEYS
Implement every one of these flows through the real interface and the persistent data layer:
1. An operator creates a workflow, receives a webhook URL, captures a sample event, adds filter, transform, HTTP request, and email steps, tests it, then enables a published revision.
2. A signed webhook starts a run, each step consumes the previous output, a delay resumes durably, and the run detail shows redacted inputs, outputs, durations, and final status.
3. An HTTP action fails after retryable errors; the operator fixes its credential, replays from the failed step, and completes the run without repeating earlier successful side effects.
SCREENS AND INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
Build these as coherent, responsive views. Each screen must define its primary action, secondary actions, visible status, validation feedback, empty state, loading or pending state, success confirmation, and recoverable failure state.
1. Workflow list: enabled state, trigger URL, published revision, last run, recent success rate, current failures, duplicate, disable, and create actions.
2. Linear workflow editor: ordered step list, trigger settings, filter and transform configuration, secret references, step test, reorder controls, validation, and publish action.
3. Webhook and test console: copyable endpoint, signing-secret status, captured sample payloads, headers, schema preview, test event, and payload-size errors.
4. Run detail: run status and timeline, per-step attempt count, redacted input and output, duration, error category, logs, replay-from-failure, and cancel controls.
CORE CAPABILITIES
1. webhook triggers with a copyable endpoint and sample payload
2. linear workflows containing filter, transform, HTTP request, delay, and email steps
3. secret references separated from workflow configuration
4. run history with per-step input, output, duration, and retry
5. manual replay from a failed step and workflow enable or disable
DETAILED BEHAVIOR AND BUSINESS RULES
Treat these as product requirements enforced on the server, not as interface suggestions:
1. Enabled executions use an immutable published workflow revision; edits remain a draft until validation succeeds and the operator explicitly republishes.
2. Limit webhook body and header sizes, verify configured signatures before enqueueing, reject stale replayed deliveries, and deduplicate events using a provider or generated event key.
3. Resolve field expressions only from the trigger and prior step outputs, validate missing paths and types, and keep filters and transforms deterministic.
4. Persist step completion before advancing, redact credential values everywhere, and require stable idempotency keys for retryable HTTP, email, and manual replay side effects.
DATA MODEL AND LIFECYCLE
Design a small relational schema centered on Workflow, Step, SecretReference, Run, StepRun. Before implementing it, document:
1. The purpose of each table, its primary key, ownership or tenant boundary, timestamps, status fields, and important attributes.
2. Foreign keys, uniqueness constraints, check constraints, the indexes the named screens need, and transaction boundaries for changes that touch several records.
3. The allowed lifecycle or state transitions, who can trigger each one, which transitions are terminal or reversible, and which audit history must stay immutable.
4. Archive, retention, and deletion behavior, including what happens to dependent records and external files.
5. The idempotency strategy for submissions, jobs, imports, notifications, webhooks, or retries where it applies.
Use migrations instead of ad-hoc schema creation. Store time instants consistently and keep the named timezone context whenever local schedules or dates matter. Never rely on a counter, a disabled button, or a client-side check to protect a business invariant.
USERS, AUTHENTICATION, AND PERMISSIONS
Implement only the roles the stated audience needs. Make the ownership and visibility model explicit before coding. Enforce authorization in every server-side query and mutation, including search, exports, attachments, live updates, and guessed URLs—not just by hiding controls. Use secure session defaults, protect state-changing requests, and provide a clear signed-out, expired-session, and forbidden state. Seed separate users whenever several roles are needed so permissions can be shown and tested.
INTERACTION AND VISUAL DIRECTION
The product should feel fast, calm, focused, and trustworthy rather than like a generic admin template. Use a clear visual hierarchy, restrained color, readable typography, generous hit targets, and a consistent place for primary actions. Start from server-rendered HTML and progressively enhance only the interactions that benefit from it. The core workflow must stay understandable if enhancement fails.
Start from server-rendered Astro pages and plain HTML forms. Use HTMX for form submissions, partial navigation, and server-driven updates, then Alpine.js only for small local browser state. The core workflow must stay understandable if either enhancement layer fails.
Design mobile layouts on purpose instead of just stacking desktop panels. Support keyboard navigation, visible focus, semantic landmarks, explicit labels, useful page titles, reduced-motion preferences, and screen-reader announcements for asynchronous results. Never use color alone to signal state. Destructive actions need a clear scope and a confirmation; safe repeated actions should be idempotent.
Add a footer to every page with the text “Created by aurelioagency.com”, where “aurelioagency.com” is an embedded link to https://www.aurelioagency.com that opens in a new tab. Keep it visible and do not remove it.
TECHNICAL DIRECTION
Build this version with the AHA stack: Astro for routing, layouts, and server-rendered pages; HTMX for interactions that benefit from HTML fragment responses; and Alpine.js for small, local interface state. Prefer Cloudflare D1 for relational persistence, R2 for object storage, Workers for server endpoints and scheduled work, Durable Objects only for coordinated real-time state, and Workflows or Queues for durable background jobs—but only when the product requirements call for them.
Keep domain rules in testable server-side modules, not in route handlers or UI components. Put persistence, external providers, and background work behind small interfaces without building a framework. Prefer plain HTML forms and URLs for durable navigation; use optimistic interaction only when a failure can be reconciled clearly.
The product brief currently identifies Workers, Workflows, D1 as capability context. Preserve any required native, browser-only, edge, storage, real-time, or background-processing capability through a narrow adapter appropriate to the selected framework. If the core workflow genuinely requires native or browser APIs, keep that runtime as the primary execution surface rather than simulating inaccessible capabilities or inventing an unnecessary web surface.
Integrate with webhooks and HTTP APIs and email and Queues. For every integration:
- List the required environment variables in an .env.example with no real secrets.
- Add a small adapter with timeouts, normalized errors, and a deterministic local fake or development path.
- Verify inbound signatures and deduplicate provider events where supported.
- Keep credentials on the server, encrypt long-lived provider tokens at rest, and redact secrets and sensitive payloads from logs.
- Define retry, backoff, and idempotency behavior for every side effect that can be repeated.
SECURITY AND PRIVACY
Redact secrets from logs, sign incoming hooks where possible, and make retries idempotent.
Validate, normalize, and length-limit all untrusted input on the server. Escape rendered content by default, sanitize any markup you intentionally accept, rate-limit public or abuse-prone actions, and use private object storage plus short-lived authorized URLs for sensitive files. Collect only the personal data the named workflow needs. Document retention and deletion behavior. Add specific protections for the riskier surfaces of this app, such as uploads, redirects, outbound requests, email delivery, OAuth, webhooks, CSV import or export, and real-time connections.
ACCEPTANCE SCENARIOS
Automate these app-specific scenarios at the most suitable level:
1. Given an invalid webhook signature, the request is rejected, no run is created, and no portion of the submitted secret or payload appears in logs.
2. Given an event that fails a filter, the run completes as filtered with later actions skipped rather than marked failed.
3. Given a destination timeout after earlier steps succeeded, replaying from the failed step reuses the saved prior output and does not resend an earlier email.
TESTING
Add focused unit tests for state transitions, authorization predicates, normalization, date or money calculations, and other risky domain rules. Add integration tests for persistence constraints and for each external adapter's success, timeout, retry, and rejection paths. Add at least one browser-level test for every end-to-end journey above, including one on a small-screen viewport. Tests must use isolated data and run with one documented command.
OPERATIONS AND FAILURE RECOVERY
Add structured server logs with request, job, or event correlation IDs, but no secrets or unnecessarily sensitive data. Make failures actionable both in the interface and in the logs. Background work must expose pending, succeeded, failed, and retrying states where relevant; never swallow errors silently. Include safe database migration and rollback guidance, seed data, backup and restore notes, external-data cleanup behavior, and a basic health or diagnostic path suited to the stack.
DELIVERABLES
Ship the working application, migrations, representative seed data, tests, .env.example, and a short README. The README must cover prerequisites, local setup, environment variables, migrations, seed and test commands, deployment, integration setup, backup and restore, security decisions, and known limitations. Seed data should cover the happy path plus at least one empty, failed, overdue, expired, archived, or permission-restricted state that matters for the product.
DEFINITION OF DONE
The app is done when a new developer can follow the README, create and migrate the database, run the app, sign in as each relevant role, complete every named journey with real persisted data, refresh without losing state, recover from common failures, and use the core interface on phone and desktop. All acceptance scenarios pass, permission boundaries are covered by tests, no core screen is left as a placeholder, and the “Created by aurelioagency.com” footer credit is visible on every page.
NON-GOALS
Do not create a public connector marketplace, branching canvas, arbitrary code execution, or polling triggers.The app you build with this prompt carries a “Created by aurelioagency.com” footer.
Short prompts that solve the hardest part without building everything.
Build the inbound webhook receiver for a workflow automation tool — the gate every event passes before a run may start.
Verify the configured signature scheme (HMAC over the raw body is the common case) using constant-time comparison, on the exact bytes received — parse-then-reverify is how signatures break. Enforce a staleness window using the timestamp in the signed material, so a captured request replayed an hour later is rejected. Cap body and header sizes before reading the full payload.
Deduplicate events: prefer the provider's event id when one exists, otherwise derive a key from a hash of the signed content plus timestamp. A duplicate key acknowledges success but starts no second run — providers retry on slow responses, so acknowledge fast and hand off to the run queue asynchronously.
On any rejection, log the reason category only: no payload bytes, no header values, no fragment of the secret. Rejected traffic is exactly the traffic you must not archive.
Done when: a tampered body is rejected in constant time, a replayed capture is refused as stale, a retried delivery starts exactly one run, and rejection logs contain zero payload content.Build replay-from-failure for a linear workflow runner: when step four dies, fix the cause and resume from step four — with steps one through three never re-executing.
The foundation is persistence: after each step completes, durably record its output and status before advancing. A run is a chain of checkpoints, not one in-memory pass. When the operator replays from the failed step, load the saved outputs of all prior steps and feed them in as if the run had never stopped — the step-two email that already went out must not send again, and the step-three HTTP call must not repeat.
The replayed step itself needs idempotency for the murky case where it failed after side effects (a timeout following a successful downstream write): each side-effecting step carries a stable idempotency key per (run, step) so the destination can dedupe.
Record replay lineage — attempt count and timestamps per step — and mark the run's final status from the latest attempt. Bound automatic retries; replay past the cap is a human decision.
Done when: replaying a failed step reuses saved prior outputs byte-for-byte, earlier side effects never repeat, and the run history shows every attempt.Build revision management for a workflow automation tool, so editing never mutates what is executing.
Publishing snapshots the workflow — steps, order, configuration, secret references — into an immutable revision. The trigger endpoint always executes the currently published revision. Edits accumulate in a draft that has zero runtime effect until the operator republishes; a half-edited draft can never be what a webhook fires into. Publishing validates first: complete step configs, resolvable secret references, field expressions referencing only steps that exist earlier — and refuses with pointed errors otherwise.
The concurrency rule: a run pins its revision at start and finishes on it, even if a new revision is published mid-run. Two runs from different revisions may execute simultaneously; each run's history records which revision it used, so debugging an old failure shows the workflow as it was then, not as it is now.
Disabling a workflow stops new runs immediately while letting in-flight runs finish.
Done when: publishing mid-run changes nothing for that run, a draft with a broken expression cannot be published, and every historical run displays its own revision.Build the field-expression resolver for a workflow tool: the mechanism by which step four says “use the email from the trigger and the id from step two's response.”
Expressions are dot-paths with array indices (trigger.body.customer.email, steps.http1.response.items.0.id) resolvable only against the trigger payload and outputs of earlier steps — forward references fail validation at publish time. At runtime, resolution is strict and typed: a missing path produces a clear error naming the path and the step that needed it, not undefined silently interpolated into an HTTP body. Distinguish missing from legitimately null, because upstream APIs mean different things by each.
Keep evaluation deterministic: no clock access, no randomness, no network — the same inputs must resolve identically on replay, or replay-from-failure produces different requests than the original run.
Filters use the same resolver with comparison operators. A filter evaluating false ends the run as filtered — a successful completion state where later steps are skipped — never as failed. Alerting that pages someone because a filter did its job is a design bug.
Done when: a missing path fails with the exact path named, replays resolve identically, and filtered runs show as filtered rather than failed.Zapier costs $30–$69 per month on its public paid plans, which is $360–$828 per year. A focused self-built replacement costs your build time plus close-to-zero hosting.
The build prompt on this page comes in four flavors: the AHA stack (Astro, HTMX, Alpine.js), Next.js, Laravel, and Ruby on Rails. The capability context for this product is Workers, Workflows, D1. Go with the stack you already know — the scope matters more than the framework.
A useful v1 needs: webhook triggers with a copyable endpoint and sample payload; linear workflows containing filter, transform, HTTP request, delay, and email steps; secret references kept separate from workflow configuration; run history with per-step input, output, duration, and retry; manual replay from a failed step and workflow enable or disable. Anything beyond that is scope creep until you personally miss it.
Do not create a public connector marketplace, branching canvas, arbitrary code execution, or polling triggers.
Yes. Zapier, n8n and Pipedream all solve the same core job — receive events, transform data, and run a short sequence of dependable actions. The scoped v1 on this page covers what most people use any of them for, so one focused build replaces whichever one you currently pay for.
n8n does most of what Zapier does, without a subscription, and your data stays with you. The point-by-point comparison is on the page.
Yes. With an open source tool installed on your side, your files stay on your machine or your server. Nobody can close your account or change the price.
No time to do it?
If you'd rather have someone install it, connect it to your tools and keep it running, that is exactly what we do at Aurelio.
Book an Automation Audit