n8n, the workflow automation company, released Nod on November 10, 2026. It’s a free, open-source personal AI agent from n8n Labs, the company’s experimental team, and n8n calls it a research preview. Nod runs on your own Mac, Windows PC or server and works through apps and websites for one person, separate from your n8n workflows.
What’s new
According to n8n’s announcement, Nod gets its own sandboxed computer and browser. It can carry out multi-step jobs in connected apps such as Gmail, Google Calendar, Drive and Slack, and on websites that have no connector at all. n8n’s examples include cancelling subscriptions, watching prices, booking a hotel after you approve it and downloading invoices.
You can message it from the app, Telegram or WhatsApp, run several jobs at once and put recurring jobs on a schedule. It’s released under the Apache 2.0 license, and the app itself is free. You bring your own model, either an API key, a ChatGPT plan or an open-source model running locally, and you pay that provider for usage. n8n says you can set a monthly spending cap, and Nod asks for confirmation when a single task passes $5 by default.
The limits are clear in n8n’s own post. Nod stops when the laptop sleeps, each install has one owner, and its permission checks are AI-based, so n8n says they can make mistakes. A hosted version is on the roadmap.
Who it affects
Owners and office managers who lose hours to browser chores: pulling invoices from supplier portals, checking prices, chasing bookings. Teams already on n8n can connect Nod to their instance, though n8n says team-level processes still belong in regular workflows.
Our take
We like the shape of this. Open source, local, your own model and a spending cap is the right way to try a browser agent. We’d still treat it as a preview. Try it on one low-risk chore this month, such as downloading last month’s invoices from a single portal, and keep it away from payments and customer data until the permission checks prove themselves. Anything that runs for the whole team, like lead routing or order sync, should stay in a proper workflow with logging. If you’re weighing an agent against a workflow, our AI agents vs automations guide and n8n vs Make vs Zapier comparison walk through the choice. Read n8n’s announcement.
Want help deciding what to hand to an agent and what to build as a workflow? See our n8n automation development and AI workflow automation services.
