n8n Essential Nodes (The Core 17)

Nate Herk's inventory of the 17 nodes that cover ~90% of all n8n workflow patterns, distilled from building 200+ automations. Organised by category: triggers (schedule, event, webhook, respond-to-webhook), data manipulation (split-out, aggregate, set/edit-fields, code), logic (if, switch, loop), integration (HTTP request, subworkflows), and AI (AI agent, tools, Google Sheets). Google Sheets is called out as the most versatile storage-and-control surface for beginners.

Key points

• Schedule trigger for time-based automation runs
• Event triggers for Gmail, Slack, CRM, form-submission based flows
• Subworkflows – modular workflows callable from other workflows (enables tool-building patterns)
• Split-out / aggregate pair – control parallelisation by transforming arrays into individual items and back
• Set (edit fields) node – source-of-truth pattern, dynamic data carrying, user configuration
• If and switch – conditional routing; switch supports more than two paths
• Code node – predictable structured data manipulation, cheaper than AI for deterministic transforms
• HTTP request – the escape hatch for any non-native API
• Loop (was split-in-batches) – rate-limit management and memory control
• Webhook / respond-to-webhook – two-way integration with external services (Lovable, 11 Labs, etc.)
• AI agent node – used even when no tools are needed, for consistency and easy upgrade path
• Structured output parser – turn agent output into separate fields for downstream mapping
• Google Sheets – the default external storage, source-of-truth, and user-facing control surface

Related entities

• N8n

Related concepts

• Workflow Automation Fundamentals

Source references

• ^[src-005] Nate Herk cluster — Nate Herk — n8n cluster (18 videos)

– Videos referenced: D9MIGseFB3g, Fqeo8q8-nJg