quickbitesdev

Quick post about a change I made that's worked out well.

I was using OpenAI API for automations in n8n — email summaries, content drafts, that kind of thing. Was spending ~$40/month.

Switched everything to Ollama running locally. The migration was pretty straightforward since n8n just hits an HTTP endpoint. Changed the URL from api.openai.com to localhost:11434 and updated the request format.

For most tasks (summarization, classification, drafting) the local models are good enough. Complex reasoning is worse but I don't need that for automation workflows.

Hardware: i7 with 16GB RAM, running Llama 3 8B. Plenty fast for async tasks.

Been running n8n with Ollama for a few months now for work automation. Wanted to share what I've learned since it's not super well-documented.

The setup is just Docker Compose with n8n + Ollama + Postgres. n8n's HTTP Request node talks directly to Ollama's REST API — no custom nodes needed.

What I'm running:

• Email digest every morning (IMAP → Ollama → Slack)
• Document summarization (PDF watcher → Ollama → notes)
• Lead scoring from form webhooks

Zero API costs, everything stays on my server. If anyone wants the workflow templates I have a pack: https://workflows.neatbites.com/

Happy to answer questions about the setup.

Free and open source Flutter email client. Unique feature: reads raw MIME emails directly from AWS S3 buckets. Also supports IMAP and Gmail OAuth.

Linux, Windows, Android. Keyboard-driven. MIT licensed.

Built an email client that reads raw MIME emails directly from AWS S3 buckets. If you route inbound email via AWS SES to S3, this is the client for you.

Features:

• Native S3 support (browse emails directly from your bucket)
• IMAP + Gmail OAuth for regular email too
• Built with Flutter (not Electron) — real native performance
• Keyboard-driven: j/k navigation, r=reply, c=compose
• Cross-platform: Linux, Windows, Android
• Free and open source

Downloads on the landing page.