Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn drafts with images

Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn drafts with images

An n8n workflow. Start it from a form with a niche or an article link. It writes a Facebook, an Instagram and a
LinkedIn post, draws a picture for each with OpenAI, keeps the pictures in Google Drive and files everything in Google
Sheets as a draft. A second half that posts the rows you approve comes switched off.

What is inside

• workflow.json: the workflow as n8n exports it, 72 nodes, six of them sticky notes. 27 nodes, the whole posting
  half, are switched off. It holds no credential. The spreadsheet, the Drive folder, the Tavily key, the Dropbox
  token and your LinkedIn person ID are left as placeholders.
• README.md: these notes.

Before you start

• An n8n instance, on n8n Cloud or your own server.
• An OpenAI API key.
• A Tavily API key.
• A Google account for Drive and Sheets, and a Drive folder for the pictures.
• A spreadsheet with a tab named Social Media Post and these eleven column names in row 1: Niche, Idea,
  Source Article, Summary, Facebook Copy, Facebook Image, Instagram Copy, Instagram Image,
  LinkedIn Copy, LinkedIn Image and Status.
• For the posting half only: a Facebook Page with an Instagram business account linked to it, a LinkedIn account and
  a Dropbox account.

Set up the drafting half

1. In n8n, create a workflow, open its menu and choose Import from File. Pick workflow.json.
2. Add an OpenAI credential. Select it in OpenAI Chat Model1, OpenAI Chat Model2, Content Writer and
   Content Writer1, and in each of those four pick a current chat model in place of chatgpt-4o-latest.
3. Replace the six image nodes: FB Image Generation, IG Image Generation, Li Image Generation and the same three
   names ending in 1. For each, add an OpenAI node with Image and Generate an Image and pick a current image model.
   Copy the old node's prompt expression, quality and size into it, and wire it where the old one was.
4. Open Tavily. Its Authentication is set to a Header Auth credential, so add one with the name Authorization
   and the value Bearer , a space, then your key. Select it, and delete the header row that holds
   <YOUR_TAVILY_API_KEY>.
5. Copy the spreadsheet's ID, the long part of its address between /d/ and /edit. Add a Google Sheets OAuth2
   credential, select it in Update Copy Content and Update Copy Content1, and replace YOUR_SHEET_ID in both.
6. Copy the Drive folder's ID, the last part of its address. Add a Google Drive OAuth2 credential, select it in
   Upload Image to Upload Image5, and replace YOUR_FOLDER_ID in all six.
7. Save. Open the form from the test address of On form submission1 and send it once each way.

OpenAI's deprecations page, read on 2 November 2026, lists chatgpt-4o-latest as removed from the API on 17 February
2026 and gpt-image-1 as shut down on 23 October 2026. The image nodes are version 1.8 of n8n's OpenAI node, whose
model list stops at gpt-image-1. It also sends response_format with any other model, a field n8n's newer node
leaves out for every GPT image model. That is why step 3 swaps the nodes rather than the model name.

How a run goes

• On form submission1, titled Social Media Auto Publish Agent, asks one question: Topic or Niche, or Article URL.
  Then If1 sends the answer to Form1 or Form2.
• Topic or Niche: Form1 asks for a niche, a brand color and your own view, the last two optional.
  Then Generate Post Ideas asks the model for five ideas, Code splits them into a list, and Form shows them as
  a dropdown. Next, Tavily runs an advanced search on the one you pick and returns five pages with their full text,
  and WebSearch Summary writes a title of up to six words and a summary.
• Article URL: Form2 asks for the link, a brand color and your view. Then Scrape the Source URL fetches the page
  with a browser's headers, Extract Content keeps the text and drops menus, ads and comments, and Clean HTML
  strips link addresses and brackets. Last, Article Summary writes the title and summary.
• From there both halves run the same way. Content Writer (or Content Writer1) writes the three posts as JSON,
  with your view worked in when you gave one. On the article path, the Facebook and LinkedIn posts end with a call to
  read the article.
• Three prompt nodes per half turn the title and summary into a picture brief for each network, with your brand color
  added. The image nodes draw each picture at 1024x1024, and the upload nodes save them to Drive as
  <title>_Facebook Copy and so on.
• A Merge node joins the four results, and Update Copy Content (or Update Copy Content1) appends one row with
  Status set to Draft. The article path writes the link in Source Article and N/A under Niche and Idea.

Switch on the posting half

The switched-off nodes sit under the note Publish to Social Media. A Schedule Trigger starts them, and on each run
they post the first row whose Status is Approved to all three networks and set it to Published.

1. Drag a box around those nodes, then press D to switch them on.
2. Add a Facebook Graph API credential and select it in Facebook Publish, Create IG Container and Post to IG.
   Replace YOUR_PAGE_ID with your Page's ID and YOUR_INSTAGRAM_ID in both Instagram nodes with the ID of the
   Instagram business account.
3. In LinkedIn Publish, pick a new LinkedIn OAuth2 credential, then put your person ID in place of
   YOUR_LINKEDIN_PERSON_ID.
4. Add a Dropbox credential and select it in Upload Image to Dropbox. In Create Shared Link, replace
   <YOUR_DROPBOX_ACCESS_TOKEN> in the Authorization header with a Dropbox access token.
5. Select the Google credentials in Get Copy Contents, Update Status, Download Image, Download Image2 and
   Download Image3, and replace YOUR_SHEET_ID in the two Sheets nodes.
6. Set the interval in Schedule Trigger, then press Publish at the top of the canvas (or Shift+P).

Facebook and LinkedIn get the picture as a file, downloaded from Drive. Instagram needs a public address, so its
branch copies the picture to Dropbox under /instagram_copy_image/, asks Dropbox for a shared link, turns dl=0 into
raw=1, then creates a media container and publishes it.

Change the look

• Number of ideas: the prompt of Generate Post Ideas and the five options in Form.
• Search: search_depth, max_results and include_raw_content in the body of Tavily. The summary prompt reads
  five results, so lower max_results only together with that prompt.
• Tone per network: the system message of Content Writer and Content Writer1. Facebook gets up to two hashtags,
  Instagram three to five plus emojis, and LinkedIn no emojis.
• Picture style: the messages of the Copy Image Prompt Generator nodes.
• Picture size and quality: the options of the image nodes.
• Posting pace: Schedule Trigger, and the one-row Limit1 after Get Copy Contents.

Good to know

• A niche run calls OpenAI's chat models six times and an article run five times, and each draws three high-quality
  pictures. A niche run also pays for an advanced Tavily search. OpenAI and Tavily bill their own parts.
• The summary prompt reads five full pages. Fewer search results leave gaps, and five long pages make a long prompt.
• A page that blocks automated requests or loads its text with JavaScript gives a thin summary or an error on the
  article path.
• Nothing is posted until you switch the second half on and mark a row Approved. It then posts one approved row per
  run, so set the interval to the pace you want.
• Every Instagram picture stays in Dropbox with a public link until you delete it.
• Once the workflow is published, anyone with the form's address can start a run on your keys. The form trigger can
  ask for a username and password.
• The Dropbox token sits in a header as plain text, so it travels with any export of the workflow.
• The original copy's Clean HTML code had lost the backslashes of its three regexes, and the file name expression
  in Upload Image to Dropbox had lost the one in /\s+/. This one has them back.