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