What you're building: five small automations that quietly run your week — a morning brief, screenshot-to-calendar, receipts-to-spreadsheet, voice-note-to-tasks, and a Sunday digest. Set up once, run forever. Stack: n8n (free, self-hosted) + Claude.

Thanks for commenting AUTO! Every automation from the reel is below, in build order — easiest first.


Before you start (10 minutes, once)

  1. n8n — the engine that runs everything. Free route: self-hosted Community Edition (unlimited workflows, free forever, runs on any ~$5 VPS or your own machine). Fast route: n8n Cloud trial.
  2. Claude API keyconsole.anthropic.com → API keys → create. Add it once in n8n under Credentials → Anthropic. Use the fast model tier: these automations cost fractions of a cent per run.
  3. Where you want the messages — Telegram is easiest (create a bot with @BotFather, paste the token into n8n). WhatsApp, Slack or email work the same way.

01 · Morning Brief

Weather, your calendar and only what's actually urgent — one message at 7:00.

Nodes: Schedule Trigger (7:00 daily) → HTTP Request (weather API) + Google Calendar (today's events) + Gmail (unread, last 24h) → Claude → Telegram (send message)

Claude prompt:

You are my morning briefing assistant. Below are today's weather, my calendar events and my unread emails.

Write a brief I can read in 30 seconds:
1. One line about the weather - only if it changes what I should wear or carry.
2. My schedule as a compact timeline. Flag anything back-to-back.
3. Only the emails that genuinely need me today. Ignore newsletters, promotions and notifications. If nothing is urgent, say "nothing urgent".

No greetings, no filler, no emoji. Maximum 120 words.

Tip: run it at 6:55 instead of 7:00 — arriving slightly before the alarm makes it feel like a service, not a notification.


02 · Screenshot → Calendar

Snap a poster or ticket, the event is in your calendar before you close the app.

Nodes: Telegram Trigger (you send the photo to your own bot) → Claude (vision) → Google Calendar (create event) → Telegram (confirmation)

Claude prompt:

Extract event details from this image.

Return ONLY valid JSON, no commentary:
{"title": "", "date": "YYYY-MM-DD", "start": "HH:MM", "end": "HH:MM or empty", "location": "", "notes": ""}

Rules: if the year is missing, assume the next occurrence of that date. If the end time is missing, leave it empty. If it is not an event at all, return {"title": "none"}.