Create a founder digest and leads from Hacker News with GPT-4o and Gmail

📊 Description Automate daily founder intelligence from Hacker News without manual monitoring. This workflow scans Hacker News discussions (Show HN, launches, AI, startups, SaaS), filters out noise and non-discussion pages, and extracts only high-signal threads. AI then converts these discussions into a concise, founder-ready daily digest highlighting key trends, why they matter, and practical actions. The digest is delivered via email, while structured insights are logged to Google Sheets for long-term tracking and analysis. ⚠️ Deployment Disclaimer This template is designed for self-hosted n8n installations only. It relies on external MCP tools and custom AI orchestration that are not supported on n8n Cloud.

🔄 What This Template Does 1️⃣ Runs automatically on a daily schedule ⏰ 2️⃣ Searches Hacker News discussions via Google using SerpAPI 🔍 3️⃣ Extracts titles, summaries, links, and metadata from results 📄 4️⃣ Filters out guidelines, index pages, and non-discussion links 🚫 5️⃣ Aggregates valid discussion threads into a single dataset 📦 6️⃣ Uses AI to identify key trends, problems, and founder-relevant signals 🧠 7️⃣ Generates a concise daily founder digest (trend, why it matters, actions) ✍️ 8️⃣ Sends the digest automatically via email 📧 9️⃣ Cleans and normalizes insights for storage 🧹 🔟 Appends structured founder intelligence to Google Sheets for tracking 📊 ✅ Key Benefits ✅ Eliminates manual Hacker News scanning ✅ Surfaces only high-signal, founder-relevant discussions ✅ Converts raw discussions into clear, actionable insights ✅ Delivers a daily, skimmable founder digest automatically ✅ Builds a historical intelligence log in Google Sheets ✅ Creates a repeatable founder research workflow ⚙️ Features Daily scheduled execution Hacker News discovery via Google Search (SerpAPI) Noise filtering with custom JavaScript logic AI-powered trend and insight extraction Founder-focused digest generation Email delivery via Gmail Insight archiving in Google Sheets 🔑 Requirements SerpAPI account Azure OpenAI credentials Gmail account connected to n8n Google Sheets account Self-hosted n8n instance 🎯 Target Audience Startup founders tracking early signals Product and growth leaders monitoring trends VCs and analysts scouting emerging tools Teams needing automated market and founder intelligence