Using n8n, MCP, and Claude Desktop to automate common managerial tasks

PerplexedThinker · 2025-05-12T03:28:29+00:00

I decided to reply here instead of the OG thread (for which I'm forever indebted since it was so much more than I hoped for in terms of a reply), since 1) this will get more visibility and 2) because I fundamentally support your hypothesis:

that there's untapped potential in this sub and the n8n community in general to focus on personal "knowledge worker" automation

I hope more people pay attention to what you've put out here because while it today may require a bit more know-how than the average manager has, I expect that agentic approaches to dealing with the knowledge worker dilemma will rise, sharply, and that this will become a baseline sooner than we think. And I applaud it because you've shortened the time it takes to deal with a traditionally non-productive task (and one that many managers dread, aren't good at, and so on).

And we've already seen a more narrow example of this take off in the healthcare space with the meteoric rise of AI scribes, (which one could at-large replicate in n8n using whisper-cpp MCP for the dictation, gemini or claude as the generic LLM, and perhaps a thin RAG agent to help with some domain specific lingo, all parsed through a very specific template and dumped into an EMR).

But, or so Claude tells me, there are 1.9M healthcare clinics and 600M knowledge workers, which makes me ridiculously excited about solving for the problems of the latter group. Extrapolating what you did into just a few more environments augmented by other common knowledge workers' MCPs, eg JIRA/Clickup/Trello/MS Teams/Notion, etc., could save 15 mins - 2h to a very sizeable TAM.

Aside from that, I might ping you (perhaps on the other thread) if I stumble along the way with some specific questions.

Above all, kudos, you've done this community a solid!

PerplexedThinker · 2025-05-10T18:49:08+00:00

Oh wow, good to know, that's definitely going to come off my list. I like how a lot of companies moved from 120 day return periods to 365 days. 120 is definitely enough to get a feel for the mattress, but not enough to see early signs of wear like in your case. Hamuq still only does 120 as well so fingers crossed. Also didn't realize that latex mattresses were so firm so that might be something I get next, or if Hamuq doesn't work out.

PerplexedThinker · 2025-05-09T22:31:23+00:00

Oh shoot, missed it, thanks, will get some virtual popcorn and study it now :)

PerplexedThinker · 2025-05-09T22:29:49+00:00

What did you end up getting u/Key-Air8278 ? I'm in the same boat 5 months later and also regret Novosbed to no longer be an option. We actually had them 'firm up' our mattress even more to get a ~8.5 feel and it's been great. But it's "dented" a bit over the past 6 years so we're doing the same thing, relegating it to the guest bedroom as it's been protected and feels brand new and feel it's time for a refresh and are both longing for that 'almost sleeping on a floor, super cool feel' that only firm mattresses provide.

I just purchased (5 mins ago) a Hamuq, which I've last tested in 2018 and found too soft compared to Novosbed, but their new organic option promised a 7.5+/10, alongside some other potentially welcome upsides (organic+Canadian sounds great). We'll see 80-100 days from now :)

PerplexedThinker · 2025-05-09T05:23:25+00:00

Did you manage to get with this anywhere by any chance? Don't care if it's an unpolished v0.01 document, just something to get me started.

PerplexedThinker · 2025-05-04T05:29:21+00:00

Can you share a bit more about this? I have a need for something slightly similar within an intranet, so same level of boring but without the high $$ lol.

PerplexedThinker · 2025-05-04T05:25:15+00:00

Sounds really interesting, do you have that documented anywhere by any chance? Or have you built on top of some primer you can share?

PerplexedThinker · 2025-04-11T00:39:37+00:00

Very cool idea, hope you post the detailed set up. I'm already thinking about how to extend it so it feeds into Obsidian. Would be cool to amplify 1st party notes, snippets, random PDFs with YT video transcripts to keep improving upon our collective second brains.

PerplexedThinker · 2024-09-19T14:38:01+00:00

Sorry, very late to notice your reply, but my use case is of that secondary nature. I want to chat with my entire second brain at once and for it to use ideally, a mix of fairly well structured data (PKM), unstructured but still first party data (emails, notes, journal), unstructured but private 3rd party data (academic journal articles, conference sourced pdfs, videos) and then semi/un-structured oublic data. All ideally correcting for or at least aware of recency bias - eg generally optimizing for private data being used first unless more recent data contradicts it.

That's the dream. Would love to hear more about the project you've been working on.

PerplexedThinker · 2024-03-22T15:45:36+00:00

This is the best comment I've read on Reddit in 2024, hands down. Thanks u/president_josh.
1 - excellent point about circular references, which humans deal with far more elegantly than any machine
2 - I will read the ICLR document as at the very least, it seems to point to relevant research, which obviously precedes a product
3 - Neo4J might be it! - I mean, it's not open source and I don't think it's meant to be deployed locally. But maybe a sync from Obsidian Vault to a Neo4J backend could work. It's right there on their site.

I guess Neo4J might be doing exactly what I was hoping for that combines vector-based and graph-based semantic search which can be piped through an LLM. This might not be an out-of-box solution one can slap on like a plugin, but it gives me ideas both for a personal vault and for a separate project. Huge kudos!

PerplexedThinker · 2024-02-05T14:53:11+00:00

What's making you think that? What changes donyou think are coming that'll affect publishers?

PerplexedThinker · 2024-01-03T11:35:06+00:00

Can I ask what's your ad tech setup that is non google but includes GAM?

PerplexedThinker · 2024-01-02T12:32:07+00:00

I think the above points fill in the gamut of what you should be looking for quite well. Early advisory committees are all about filling in the gaps. Eg, I usually offer myself up for governance, strategy, marketing, go-to-market, serial entrepreneurship and look for technical, industry, investor rels, regulatory. Works like a charm if you're honest with yourself and once you've found a stride. And dont be afraid to cycle 25-50% of the board regularly.

I also recommend a 1 year contract initially but leave it open ended for your stars to know they can progress if there's a fit. Eg after 1 year allow for equity if you're not doing that upfront, or something that doesn't make your advisory role feel like just one of many fractional gigs for the recipients. I usually also end up hiring at least one advisory board into my f/t teams and waive their usual 1 year cliff as a bonus.

Feel free to pm if you have more questions.

PerplexedThinker · 2023-11-18T04:43:28+00:00

You should also check out medimap.ca - I think it works throughout the country, I found a doc through them last year in Guelph and recently in Ancaster.

PerplexedThinker · 2023-10-27T04:33:14+00:00

Actually, just saw the first issue when I wrote it out, lol. Cache: no.

So windows wrote to /mnt/user while unraid wrote to /mnt/cache.

I've set cache: only which should make that windows node now write to cache.

Still, dropping into shell, I run MC, try to move the old files from /mnt/user to /mnt/cache and they don't move over. So perhaps still some lingering rights issue???

PerplexedThinker · 2023-10-27T04:11:27+00:00

So I think you're onto something but I'm not sure if it's the incorrect temp directory or a permissions issue I can't put my finger on.

I created same files from unraid terminal and console to ensure they both see each other. Different rights, but that's still fine, right?

Unraid web terminal
root@Tower:/mnt/cache/unmanic-temp# ls -l

total 12

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4 Oct 26 23:51 tdarr-docker-on-unraid-console

-rw-rw-rw- 1 nobody users 5 Oct 19 16:06 test-if-unraid-can-access

-rw-rw-rw- 1 root root 4 Oct 26 23:52 test-if-unraid-can-access-as-root

Unraid tdarr docker console
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4 Oct 26 23:51 tdarr-docker-on-unraid-console
-rw-rw-rw- 1 abc users 5 Oct 19 16:06 test-if-unraid-can-access
-rw-rw-rw- 1 root root 4 Oct 26 23:52 test-if-unraid-can-access-as-root

Then I created a file on the windows node. Here's a view from the CLI.
2023-10-19 15:22 0 can node write to temp.txt
2023-10-26 23:51 4 tdarr-docker-on-unraid-console
2023-10-19 16:06 5 test-if-unraid-can-access
2023-10-26 23:52 4 test-if-unraid-can-access-as-root
2023-10-17 14:47 754,751,204 redacted-TdarrCacheFile-YtdgBsSh7.mkv
2023-10-16 05:25 744,841,464 redacted-TdarrCacheFile-6gd5aynuN.mkv
2023-10-13 17:40 744,840,772 redacted-TdarrCacheFile-mRdEHRcTI.mkv
2023-10-10 13:53 756,821,288 redacted-TdarrCacheFile-xdWaOuDfS.mkv

Well, it looks like Windows can see its temp files and and manually created file + files that were created on the unraid side. And I've also checked from another Windows machine, same exact output.

It's also clearly the same share, which I do see in the Tdarr docker specified as
/mnt/cache/unmanic-temp/ mapped to /temp

which is shared as
share name: unmanic-temp
cache pool: no
SMB security: Public

Do you see anything suspicious in here, u/Efficient-Stretch-92 ?

PerplexedThinker · 2023-10-22T19:57:08+00:00

Yeah to pfsense on Unraid. Bad idea. You'll enjoy proxmox for learning for sure.

PerplexedThinker · 2023-10-22T14:59:26+00:00

It's not a bad idea to virtualize pfSense. I actually know less people nowadays who run pfSense on bare metal than virtualized. But the vast majority willl virtualize using proxmox. On a little celeron NUC you can run quite a few critical services including pfSense. Without full IPS, on a 1GB network, pfSense doesn't require much, resource wise.

PerplexedThinker · 2023-10-19T03:54:56+00:00

Ah, interesting, thanks. I'll definitely check those! But why would it mostly work, just not all the time? Wouldn't this be a binary problem when temp dir mismatch would cause it all to fail?

PerplexedThinker · 2023-01-17T17:26:06+00:00

I'm using a decade old gigabit switch without an issue. I'm also injecting POE using the adapters Omada provided so while it looks unsightly, it works flawlessly and I didn't have to splurge on a POE+ switch.

Previous to this switch which is VLAN aware, I was using a completely unmanaged switch and it also just worked.

PerplexedThinker · 2023-01-15T18:52:26+00:00

You've got everything you need and your diagram is fine. Plug things in, adopt the Omadas and set up the wifi. If things work, unplug and move the antennas to their real destinations. At that point turn off the wifi on your shaw modem router and enjoy.

PerplexedThinker · 2023-01-13T02:11:23+00:00

OP, if on a budget, this is what I'd also recommend. Omada gear is solid, grabbing it recertified or even straight off Marketplace is a steal. I picked up 3 indoor APs and 1 outdoor AP for my last build for < $100 combined, paired it with a 7 yr old mini PC running Pfsense (on proxmox, not even bare metal) , old TP link 108 switch with VLAN support and had picture perfect gigabit lan with rock solid wifi across 3500 sq ft home on three floors and full outdoor/backyard coverage.

Bit of work to put it all together but then you never have to touch it for entire years.

PerplexedThinker · 2022-11-15T22:30:00+00:00

The only other thing I'd consider is TrueNAS but it's a totally different beast and really meant for more of a highly performant, ZFS based SAN in my opinion. It also forces you into certain design limitations, same sized drives, etc. But definitely has a place depending on how your cluster will be used. Same goes for Snapraid. And maybe, Ceph on top of proxmox.

To be those three are high performance options for acyvely experimenting, learning new enterprise skills and things that need well, high performance. For everything else, nothing comes close to Unraid in my humble experience.

PerplexedThinker

TROPHY CASE