n8n's New MCP Feature Is A CHEAT CODE

NN just released instance level MCPs and in this video I'm going to walk you through why you should care and why more people should be talking about it. This new layer of MCP not only lets you execute and audit your existing workflows in NIDN, but you can also edit them in a way that's a lot cleaner and buttery compared to the open-source alternatives. I'll show you how we can enable it in NADN and how you can use it in things like cloud desktop and even cursor and cloud code. Let's dive right

in. All right. So when you pop into my NADN, you can see that these two workflows here are not only toggled to on, but we have two different MCP icons next to the workflow. And this shows you that the MCP server has access to execute and edit both of these workflows. To enable this, you just have to do two things. Thing numero uno is you have to go to your admin panel and make sure that you're updated on the latest version. I'm running on the latest beta version and that is the 1.122.3.

in. All right. So when you pop into my NADN, you can see that these two workflows here are not only toggled to on, but we have two different MCP icons next to the workflow. And this shows you that the MCP server has access to execute and edit both of these workflows. To enable this, you just have to do two things. Thing numero uno is you have to go to your admin panel and make sure that you're updated on the latest version. I'm running on the latest beta version and that is the 1.122.3.

And then once you update it, you should be able to see a new menu. And when you navigate back and go to the left hand side right here and click on this icon, go to settings and then pop into this new tab called MCP access. Yours should be completely blank and then it should have a server URL with the server associated with your edit end URL. Now, you can see right here I already have my two available workflows that we saw on the front end. And all you have to do is

click on this access token tab. And then you'll see right here it shows your access token. You can click on this little dropdown and then it'll reveal the general structure of the MCP server connection. All you have to do to configure yours is click on this refresh button and then this will populate right here with your key. Then you can just copy this and hold this on the side because we'll need to use this in cloud desktop in cursor in cloud code or wherever you want to be able to invoke

the functions of this MCP server. And one last thing I forgot to mention is to make sure you enable the MCP. Otherwise, you won't be able to do this to begin with. Once you have this configured, then you can go back to your Niten homepage and click on any workflow you want and then set it to active to include it in the MCP server. And then you'll be able to click on this enable MCP access. Once you click this, you'll see this icon pop up right here. And that means that you can now access this

via that MCP layer. Now, if you've ever worked with MCPS, you know that they like metadata or context. So, what you can do for any workflow that you enable is click on this icon right here. And this edits the workflows description. It doesn't do anything functional for the workflow, but you basically add a bunch of labels or information about what this workflow does. So if you try to invoke it from claw desktop from cursor wherever it will have a higher likelihood to find the right workflow

and especially not get confused between very similar functioning workflows. So in this case this workflow is for the Gemini rag API. So I could say something like this workflow is designed to help create a rag implementation workflow using the brand new Gemini rag API. So in this case then we have this we can click save. And now if we go back to our original screen there and go to settings and go to MCP access, you can see right here this is the workflow and here's the

description we just added right now. Now what does this look like to invoke from something like cloud desktop? Well, if you remember before we had this JSON URL you copy to your clipboard. All we have to do if we go into something like Claude is go into the settings and then click on developer right here. And then this is where you can configure your JSON file for enabling the MCP server. Once you click on edit config, you want to paste in the exact URL you got from

NIDEN. And when you open up the file, you should have something like this where you visibly have the NADN MC file right here. And this is where your API key will go. All you have to do again is just copy paste as is. In case you had other MCV servers, what I would do is take your existing file and then put it into something like claude with the new URL you've copied over from edit and then tell it make one compound MCP file that I can easily copy paste. Once you

NIDEN. And when you open up the file, you should have something like this where you visibly have the NADN MC file right here. And this is where your API key will go. All you have to do again is just copy paste as is. In case you had other MCV servers, what I would do is take your existing file and then put it into something like claude with the new URL you've copied over from edit and then tell it make one compound MCP file that I can easily copy paste. Once you

put that together, then save the file, exit completely and exit claw desktop and when you log in, you should see the brand new MCP server. So now if I go on my search and tools section right here, you should see I now have this ended in MCP and these are the three tools like I mentioned. You can search workflows, you can execute workflows, and you can get workflow details where you can also submit changes to those same workflows as well. So let's say I wanted to

simulate running this workflow. If we go back into cloud code, all I have to say is execute the endmc with a dummy question to ping the workflow that has a web hook chatbot. Now, in this case, I just described briefly what it looks like. It's then able to search the workflows. And you'll see once I send that query, it invokes this search workflows function. It sends this query right here that says web hook chat. And then at the bottom, you can see the response of the actual workflow itself.

And you can see the trigger, the lang chain component, which is the AI agent. It then searches it, gets the workflow details, so more information about that workflow, and then actually executes the request itself. So this is executing the hello. This is a ping test. What is 2 plus2? Comes back with a response at the very bottom. You can see right here you get a success. And then it responds with the success in plain language right here. And now if I say send a more

philosophical question instead of having to now retrieve the workflow again since it's in context, we can take advantage of that and it just re-executes the same workflow because it knows exactly where it's going. So this one sends if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it doesn't make a sound then comes back with a response and this is what it comes back with. Now this is cloud desktop. I'll show you how you can use this in something like cursor cloud code where you can ask it

to also edit and fix the workflow if it's not functioning. So here we are in cursor and you'll see right here I have my MCP JSON where I've pasted the exact same JSON I just showed you before. And then if you want to use it in cursor then we can click on and write MCP. We'll click on tools and MCPS. You'll see right here I've enabled the MCP server from Naden. And I also have the OG NIN MCP server. The one that is open source. It helps you build workflows without having to pay for anything. Now

I did compare both if you're curious. If you use the open-source NAN MCP, you can totally do tons of damage. The one thing I noticed though is on editing, the editing is a lot more tailored, stable, and robust if you use the actual new native MCP server. So now that this is set up in cursor, let's simulate building a very basic workflow which is purposely incomplete and let's have the niten MCP complete it until it can finally execute it. I'm going to build this exact super basic workflow from

scratch. So if I go into plus, I go into workflow and let's create a brand new one. Let's just do a build with AI because I'm lazy. Can you create a very basic workflow where you have an input web hook that's expecting some form of query or a question and then it goes to an AI agent that has let's say GPT4.1 mini running behind the scenes to answer the question. Then we have a respond to web hook and we also have the window buffer memory so it can keep the track

scratch. So if I go into plus, I go into workflow and let's create a brand new one. Let's just do a build with AI because I'm lazy. Can you create a very basic workflow where you have an input web hook that's expecting some form of query or a question and then it goes to an AI agent that has let's say GPT4.1 mini running behind the scenes to answer the question. Then we have a respond to web hook and we also have the window buffer memory so it can keep the track

of the conversation. So other than the broken English there, it should be able to understand that and put it together. And once it does that, I'm going to tell you straight up where it would be missing information from being able to run. And I'll keep it like that on purpose to show you the power of this MCP server. So this is the workflow that we saw before and I'll tell you where all the flaws are. So we set up a duplicate of what you saw before, but this one is missing certain pieces.

Number one, if you have a web hook, that web hook is going to have a series of information. the names of the fields passing through will be something we have to map in the AI agent field and the window buffer memory will have to know to get the information from the AI agent and that there's something called a session ID. All of this right now is missing. It's completely blank. All we have I assume is some form of JSON query right here. And then even the respond to

web hook won't work. So, if I just add a description and let's say this is the brand new chatbot that is incomplete that we have to complete and make sure it works properly. Okay. So, if we add this and one thing I'll do to make my life easier is copy the exact name just so I can make the MCP work a little bit less. So, once we go back into cursor here, I'll say I want to be able to go and execute the following workflow. Chances are it's not properly configured. It might be missing some

pieces from being able to run this chatbot so we can ping over a web hook or a web hook input and then send that over to the agent to come back with a response. Here's the exact name of the workflow. I need you to use the naden mcp http server that I've attached behind the scenes. So this should try to execute the execute workflow function. It won't work guaranteed because it's missing pieces. But once it realizes it doesn't work, and I gave it a little bit of a preview that I don't expect it to

work, it should go and iterate on its own until it maps the fields correctly until it can execute it. So you can see here, it's first going to query the exact workflow name. It should find it since it's the exact verbatim title. There you go. You should see it found it right here. I have this set to YOLO mode, so it'll keep running on its own, but it'll ask me for permission on the big things. So it's now going to plan what it looks like. It sees the web hook, the AI agent, the respond to web

hook. It should realize it's not going to be able to execute and basically add all the different pieces we need to have it run. So you can see right here, it's already identified two issues. One, our web hook is set to get, not post. And number two, the web hook response mode is immediate. It needs to change it to make it work from end to end. So click on run here, and I'll update you after it's ran through, let's say, 30 to 40% of the way there. So here are the

hook. It should realize it's not going to be able to execute and basically add all the different pieces we need to have it run. So you can see right here, it's already identified two issues. One, our web hook is set to get, not post. And number two, the web hook response mode is immediate. It needs to change it to make it work from end to end. So click on run here, and I'll update you after it's ran through, let's say, 30 to 40% of the way there. So here are the

parameters it's going to send to adjust the API request. Then we click on run. It should now start to literally configure the JSON behind the scenes to edit the workflow. So if I keep clicking on run here, you can literally see if I do show more, this is the underlying JSON for the workflow, which is something I used to use manually with cloud or cloud projects back in the day, but now it's native. And what's different about this versus the OG in an MCP is it's a lot more tailored to our

exact workflow. and our preferences that we have for the types of nodes that we're using. And you can see right here, it comes up with yet another issue that I told you would be a problem, which is a missing session ID from the memory of our chatbot. So, when we click on run, it should now keep adding more parameters until we get to the final part where fingers crossed we should be able to run it. And in under a minute, you could see we finally got the workflow is now working.

exact workflow. and our preferences that we have for the types of nodes that we're using. And you can see right here, it comes up with yet another issue that I told you would be a problem, which is a missing session ID from the memory of our chatbot. So, when we click on run, it should now keep adding more parameters until we get to the final part where fingers crossed we should be able to run it. And in under a minute, you could see we finally got the workflow is now working.

So, it fixed all the missing IDs. It fixed any prompting issues. it logged in or used my credentials I already had in my account for OpenAI. And while I'm showing you the foundations in this video, you can use this MCP server for all kinds of things. Just very important things to remember is if you want to use any workflow, make sure it's toggled to on, you enable it via the MCP, and most importantly, you want to be very sure about whatever changes you're making,

you're comfortable with pushing that to production if it's a productionbased workflow. If you found this video helpful, please let me know down in the comments below. helps the video, helps the channel, and I'll see you in the next