In my last post, I talked about how I started my own local server using an old laptop, and start using it to host my images instead of iCloud.

In addition to many useful services that I have running on the server in docker containers, I saved the best for last…

We’ve all heard about n8n, a powerful, open-source workflow automation tool designed to connect applications, databases, and APIs through a visual, node-based editor. It enables users to automate complex, multi-step tasks—including AI-driven workflows—by connecting over 400+ different services. It supports both self-hosted (full data control) and cloud options. 

So, I installed it on my server and started thinking about cool ideas to implement. I’m not gonna lie, it was running for over a week until I got my first idea for a workflow that will help me in my daily routine. I always tend to work on a tool, workflow, app that helps me in my day, rather than being happy about for a day or two and then ditch it and never use it again.

Managing the Server from Telegram

My first idea was being able to control my server from Telegram using n8n!

So, I started learning and testing, until I got a working workflow that takes a command from Telegram bot and execute it on the server and gets the results back. This is a very important feature to have, because now I can access my server and debug something on the run.

Summarising News from Public Telegram Channels

We all have news telegram channels that we follow, and all of them are muted, and to be honest, they post a lot and I don’t have time to read all of their messages.

So, I had an idea, why not using the power of n8n and AI-agent to get news from any telegram channel and give me the summary at the end of the day!

I searched a lot for a tool that gives me ready to use API or RSS feed endpoint to get telegram channel messages, but no luck, I didn’t like any of them, and started building my own…

Building a tool to scrape any public telegram channel

I used Playwright, for this, it’s a powerful open-source library for automating web browsers (Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit) with a single API. It is widely used for reliable end-to-end testing, web scraping, and general browser automation.

So, I eventually had a running python script that accepts two arguments, telegram channel, and how many hours back I need to scrape, and returns a json data with the messages.

Now I can let my n8n workflow calls this script every 12 hours and let the AI-agent node summarise the news and send it to me at Telegram.

Checking for Car Fines

My third workflow was a bit hard to implement, because I didn’t find any public API for checking RTA fines in Dubai, but I managed to get it working eventually.

This workflow simply checks if there’s any fines on my car every morning and sends me a Telegram message. If any fines were detected, it also parses the total fine, and all the details.

Nothing feels better than a message in the morning saying that yesterday’s race with a stranger at the highway didn’t cost you like a thousand dollars :)

In the end, we can stay up to date with new technologies and tools, and always find a way to use them so they make our lives easier, and help us be more productive.