Diag n8n

When n8n grows past one screen, put the workflow estate in a hierarchy

n8n is excellent at the local job: build a workflow, connect nodes, test the path, and keep the runtime close to the automation.

The problem starts later. A team does not end up with one workflow. It ends up with lead intake, support triage, enrichment jobs, notifications, exports, retries, AI helpers, scheduled maintenance, and one-off experiments that quietly become production.

At that point, the question is no longer "what node comes next on this canvas?" The useful questions become:

• Which business capability owns this workflow?
• What other workflows or services must be healthy before it can run?
• Which credentials block it?
• Which workflows are entry points and which are sub-workflows?
• What checks prove the estate is ready?

That is not a single-canvas problem. It is a hierarchy and dependency problem.

Keep n8n as the editor

Diag n8n does not try to replace the n8n editor. The workflow graph still belongs in n8n because that is where the runtime semantics live.

Hood2 sits beside it as the operating map:

Operations
  Automation Estate
    Revenue Ops
      Lead Intake
        Receive Lead
        Validate Lead
        Enrich Company
        Route Lead
    Support
      Ticket Triage
        Receive Ticket
        Classify Ticket
        Lookup Customer
        Draft Response

That structure gives the team a stable place for docs, ownership, contracts, fixture payloads, readiness checks, and dependencies.

Dependencies should be explicit

The value is not only the tree. The tree becomes useful when nodes can depend on each other.

A workflow tutorial might depend on local n8n being reachable. A NASA API example depends on that public API being reachable. An AI agent workflow depends on model credentials. A production support workflow might depend on customer lookup, classification, and escalation services.

In Hood2, those become named conditions and links instead of prose buried in a README.

First Workflow
  depends on Quickstart:runnable
  depends on Local Instance:local_n8n_ready
  depends on NASA API:api_reachable

When something is blocked, the map can show what is blocking it.

The Diag n8n angle

Diag n8n is the technical wrapper around this model. It surfaces the n8n workflow estate as a browsable operating structure:

• workflow groups by business capability
• workflow fixtures and local runtime readiness
• Hood2 project nodes
• tutorial and dependency maps
• implementation gaps, such as commands that are modeled but not executable yet

The point is simple: n8n remains the workflow editor and runtime. Hood2 becomes the operational memory around the workflow estate.

That is how a pile of workflows becomes something a team can operate.