Today I can build an application, test it on my machine, deploy it and run it in production using only projects that I maintain, and the container I tested is the same one that goes to production. I never planned an "ecosystem". It is the result of a method I have been repeating for more than twenty years, and this article tells where that method came from and how it works today.
n8n is an excellent workflow IDE, but its default production workflow relies on manual, UI-driven deployment. That
approach breaks fundamental engineering principles around change control, auditability, and reproducibility.
n8n-gitops exists to close that gap by turning n8n workflows into versioned, reviewable, and reproducible artifacts
managed through Git and deployed through automation. It allows teams to keep n8n's visual productivity while enforcing
the same delivery standards used for any other production system.
Maintaining more than 30 open source projects is a bit like conducting an orchestra alone.
Each project has its own particularities, dependencies, pipelines, documentation, and tests — and yet all of them need to work in harmony.
In a company with 30 microservices, it’s common to have something like 2 to 4 DevOps, 3 to 5 Product Owners, and 50 to 100 developers.
I do this mostly by myself.
It sounds impossible, but it isn’t.
Let’s walk through how this ecosystem works — and how automation, standardization, and good use of Artificial Intelligence make it not only viable, but actually enjoyable.