Guide
n8n silent failure detection for workflows that succeed at doing nothing.
A silent failure is a run n8n marks successful, or a workflow that never starts, while the business outcome is zero. Error workflows do not catch it.
Three shapes of silence
Zero-item success. The webhook fired, the IF node filtered everyone out, and the CRM node never ran. Status: success. Leads: 0. Treat that as an alert unless the workflow is a heartbeat or a report that is allowed to be empty.
No execution at all. The workflow is still active in the UI, but the trigger has not produced a success inside your window. Cron credentials expire. External schedulers get paused. Nobody clicks the test button.
Deactivated. A teammate turned the workflow off while debugging and did not turn it back on. There is no execution to fail, so there is no error email.
How the check decides
LeadPulse reads recent executions and, when n8n includes run data, counts the items on the last node that produced output. If that count is 0, the zero-item rule opens an incident. If you know a workflow is supposed to be empty sometimes, mark zero-item successes as OK and the rule stays off.
Error rate is separate. A workflow that fails 6 of its last 10 finished runs is not silent, but it is not healthy either. The threshold is yours. Small samples do not alert, so a single test failure does not page you.
Try it before you create an account
The free audit accepts an n8n URL and API key, reads workflows once, and throws the key away. It lists inactive workflows, stale successes, zero-item runs, and error rates. If the picture is ugly, start the trial and keep the rules running.