Automate the busywork. n8n + LLM. Two weeks.
Pick three workflows — inbound triage, report generation, lead enrichment, support auto-drafts — and we wire them through n8n + Claude or GPT. $3,999, self-hosted or cloud.
AI Automation Sprint — a 2-week engagement that picks 3–5 workflows from your backlog (inbound triage, support auto-draft, nightly report generation, lead enrichment, data-cleanup cron, outbound personalization) and wires them through n8n + Claude or GPT. Every workflow ships with retries (exponential backoff + jitter), dead-letter queue (inspectable), cost observability per LLM call (hooked to your logging), and workflow documentation in your team wiki. Deploy self-hosted or on n8n Cloud — your call. Handoff session included so your team can extend flows after we leave.
Five automation patterns the sprint ships.
Most sprints we run are a mix of three of these five. The written scoping spec on Day 1 maps your backlog to the patterns and ranks them by ROI.
| Workflow | Today | What n8n + LLM ships |
|---|---|---|
| Inbound form submissions triaged by hand | No routing; every lead or ticket goes to the same inbox regardless of priority | n8n workflow: form → LLM classifier → CRM field or Slack channel or ticket priority |
| Support queue drowning in tier-1 repetitive tickets | No auto-draft; agents re-type the same answer 20 times a day | n8n workflow: new ticket → RAG over KB → LLM drafts reply → human reviews + sends |
| Weekly / nightly reports written by hand | Analyst pastes CSV into ChatGPT, copies back a paragraph, emails it out | n8n workflow: scheduled → DB query → LLM summary → email / Slack / Notion page |
| Leads enriched manually from LinkedIn or Crunchbase | SDR spends 2 hours a day copy-pasting company facts | n8n workflow: new lead → enrichment APIs → LLM normalizer → CRM record |
| Zapier bill over $500/month and growing | Flat per-task pricing; AI steps are weak, self-hosting not an option | n8n migration — same workflows, 10× cheaper, better AI nodes, self-host option |
The 2-week automation-sprint schedule.
Week 1 ends with the first two workflows running on staging. Week 2 ends with every flow in production, hardened, documented, and handed off.
- W1week 1
Scoping + first two workflows
Week 1 starts with a scoping call where we pick 3–5 workflows from your backlog, rank them by ROI, and confirm stack access (CRM, ticketing, DB, Slack, email, custom). By end of week 1 the first two workflows are running end-to-end on staging — with retries, dead-letter, and cost telemetry.
- W2week 2
Remaining workflows + hardening + handoff
Week 2 ships the remaining workflows, hardens error paths (idempotent retries, dead-letter inspection, alerting on repeated failures), wires cost observability per LLM call, writes workflow documentation in your team wiki, and closes with a 60-minute handoff session where your team watches a live walkthrough of every flow.
- W1week 1
Scoping + first two workflows
Week 1 starts with a scoping call where we pick 3–5 workflows from your backlog, rank them by ROI, and confirm stack access (CRM, ticketing, DB, Slack, email, custom). By end of week 1 the first two workflows are running end-to-end on staging — with retries, dead-letter, and cost telemetry.
- W2week 2
Remaining workflows + hardening + handoff
Week 2 ships the remaining workflows, hardens error paths (idempotent retries, dead-letter inspection, alerting on repeated failures), wires cost observability per LLM call, writes workflow documentation in your team wiki, and closes with a 60-minute handoff session where your team watches a live walkthrough of every flow.
A sample workflow we shipped last month.
This is the shape of one production workflow — trigger, retrieval, LLM step, confidence gate, destination, error handling, cost observability. Every flow we ship follows this shape.
01# Workflow · support-ticket-auto-draft (n8n export · trimmed)02 03Trigger: Zendesk webhook (new ticket)04↓05RAG retrieval over support KB (Pinecone)06 - top-5 relevant articles07 - threshold: 0.78 cosine similarity08↓09Claude Sonnet 4.6 · draft reply10 - system prompt (cached, cache_control ephemeral)11 - user: ticket body + retrieved articles12 - max_tokens: 60013↓14IF confidence < 0.7 → escalate to human, skip draft15ELSE → attach draft to ticket as internal note16↓17Slack notify #support-ops with ticket link + draft preview18 19Error handling:20- RAG step: retry 3x exponential, dead-letter to "rag-failures" queue after 3 fails21- LLM step: retry on 429/5xx with jitter; timeout after 45s22- Zendesk write: idempotent (keyed on ticket_id + draft_version)23 24Cost observability:25- logUsage hook fires on every LLM call26- routed to Datadog (tag: workflow=support-ticket-auto-draft)27- daily rollup mailed to ops-leads@What the sprint delivers.
Five deliverables. Fixed price. Self-host or cloud, your choice.
- 013–5 n8n workflows wired to your stack + LLM
- 02Self-hosted or n8n Cloud deployment, your choice
- 03Error handling, retries, dead-letter inspection
- 04Cost observability on every LLM call
- 05Workflow documentation + handoff session
Fixed fee. Self-host or n8n Cloud.
3–5 workflows per sprint. If you need more, stack sprints or book a retainer. No Zapier per-task meter, no SaaS lock-in, no surprise invoices.
- turnaround
- 2 weeks
- scope
- 3–5 n8n workflows · retries · dead-letter · cost telemetry · documentation · handoff
- guarantee
- Self-hosted or n8n Cloud, your choice. Code and config are yours.
AI Automation Sprint vs Zapier vs hand-coded scripts.
Four dimensions. The lime column is what you get with a fixed-price n8n + LLM sprint that you own and can self-host.
| Dimension | Zapier | Hand-coded scripts | Full agent build | Afterbuild Labs sprint |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Approach | Zapier | Hand-coding scripts | Full agent build | Afterbuild Labs AI Automation Sprint |
| Price | $50–$2,000+/mo, per-task metered | Engineer salary + maintenance time | $9,499–$25k+ for an agent build | $3,999 fixed · 2 weeks · ~10× cheaper to run |
| AI nodes | Basic; no caching, no streaming | Whatever you hand-roll | Full agent surface — often overkill | Cached, retry-safe, observable |
| Self-host option | No — cloud-only | You own it (and the maintenance) | Yes — we build on your infra | Self-hosted or n8n Cloud, your choice |
Who should book the sprint (and who should skip it).
Book the sprint if…
- →You have 3–5 repetitive workflows eating a human's day and know which ones you'd automate first.
- →Your Zapier bill is over $500/month and the AI nodes are holding you back.
- →You want LLM steps in your automation (classification, summarization, drafting) — not just webhooks.
- →You want to self-host for data-residency, compliance, or cost reasons.
- →Your team can extend n8n flows after handoff — our goal is your team owning the stack, not us.
Do not book the sprint if…
- →You need a planning-capable agent with autonomy — book AI Agent MVP ($9,499) instead.
- →You need retrieval-augmented generation across your docs — book RAG Build ($6,999) instead.
- →Your workflows are simple if-this-then-that with no AI — raw Zapier or a cron + shell script is cheaper.
- →You're locked into a SaaS automation vendor with no HTTP / webhook escape hatch.
- →You want a single LLM feature wired into a product, not workflow automation — book API Integration Sprint ($1,999) instead.
AI Automation Sprint — your questions, answered.
Automate the busywork. Book the 2-week sprint.
Two weeks. $3,999 fixed. 3–5 n8n workflows wired to your stack and LLM — with retries, dead-letter, cost observability, and documentation. Self-host or n8n Cloud, your choice.
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