n8n's Nod personal agent runs locally, but your laptop has to stay awake
shoumikgoswami · reddit · 2026-11-11
n8n Labs released Nod on November 10 as a research preview: a standalone personal agent, separate from n8n workflows, with Mac/Windows clients and an Apache-2.0 codebase.
- Concrete tasks: downloading supplier invoices, extracting numbers from dashboards with no export button, canceling subscriptions; connects to apps and uses its own browser for sites without integrations.
- Practical catch: scheduled jobs stop when your laptop closes or sleeps; you need an always-on machine or your own server, with hosted operation still on the roadmap.
- Privacy: local doesn't mean offline — your chosen model provider receives task data, app connections go through an n8n-hosted service by default, and basic usage sharing is on by default for new users (opt-out available). The app is free but model usage costs money.
The author calls it a useful distinction between a personal agent and a shared automation service, but wants to know which machine will actually be awake before handing it recurring jobs.
Related event: n8n Labs open-sources personal agent Nod with prompt injection defenses(5 posts)→
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