n8n

Why n8n over Zapier or Make

• Self-hosted — webhook payloads never leave your network. Useful if you handle community moderation for a server that itself handles sensitive data.
• No per-task pricing — run as many workflows as your server can handle.
• Full Javascript in any node — verify HMAC signatures, transform payloads, branch on anything.

Set up

1. In n8n, create a new Workflow. Add a Webhook trigger node. Set the HTTP method to POST and authentication to None — we sign the payload, not the request.
2. Save the workflow once so n8n issues a webhook URL.
3. In Sloth Lee's dashboard, create a webhook subscription pointing at that URL. See the Webhooks setup guide for the rest of the flow.
4. Add a Function node next, and verify the signature using the snippet below before any downstream action runs.

Signature verification (n8n Function node)

const crypto = require('crypto');

// Replace SECRET with the value you copied from the dashboard.
// Best practice: store it in an n8n Credential, not here.
const secret = $env.SLOTH_LEE_WEBHOOK_SECRET;
const body = JSON.stringify($input.item.json);
const sig = $input.item.headers['x-sloth-signature'] || '';

const expected = 'sha256=' + crypto
  .createHmac('sha256', secret)
  .update(body)
  .digest('hex');

if (!crypto.timingSafeEqual(
  Buffer.from(expected),
  Buffer.from(sig)
)) {
  throw new Error('Invalid signature');
}

return $input.item;

Common n8n recipes

• Mod actions → PostgreSQL — pipe everymod_action event into your own analytics DB for retention and pattern analysis.
• Tickets → Sentry / Linear — bug-report tickets become Linear issues automatically; the n8n workflow extracts [bug] tags from the subject.
• Anomaly alerts → on-call rotation — time-of-day routing so the right person gets paged.