Tutorial: Build Your First AI Agent in n8n (Step by Step)

What you will build

By the end of this tutorial you will have a functional AI agent inside n8n that can receive a chat message, call multiple tools, remember prior turns and return a grounded answer.

The same pattern powers most production agent workflows we ship for clients — only the tools and prompts change.

Nodes you will use

Chat Trigger, AI Agent, OpenAI Chat Model, Simple Memory, and two Tool nodes wrapping HTTP requests. That is all you need for the base pattern.

Wiring it together

Follow the video walkthrough above and pause at each node. The written steps below mirror the same order so you can jump back and forth.