Automate PDF Summaries: CoreNexis OCR & GPT-4 with n8n

Transform any PDF document into a comprehensive, AI-powered summary delivered straight to your inbox with this powerful n8n automation workflow. Combining CoreNexis OCR technology with GPT-4 intelligence, this workflow automatically extracts text from uploaded PDFs and generates structured summaries in a beautiful HTML email format.

What this workflow does

This streamlined automation process requires no user accounts or complex setup. Users simply fill out a form with their name, email, and PDF file upload. The workflow then:

• Extracts user metadata and identifies the PDF binary through a custom code step
• Submits the PDF to CoreNexis OCR API for comprehensive text extraction
• Intelligently polls the OCR status with automatic retry logic until processing completes
• Downloads the extracted text file from CoreNexis output URL
• Uses GPT-4.1-mini to analyze the full text and create a structured 5-section Markdown summary covering Document Overview, Key Points, Important Numbers and Dates, Action Items, and Executive Summary
• Converts the summary into a branded HTML email using GPT-4o-mini
• Automatically delivers the final summary to the user's inbox via Gmail

Use cases

Perfect for businesses and professionals who need quick document analysis: legal teams reviewing contracts, executives processing reports, researchers analyzing academic papers, consultants summarizing client documents, or sales teams extracting key information from proposals and presentations.

Technical details

Built with essential n8n nodes including Form Trigger for seamless file uploads, HTTP nodes for CoreNexis OCR API integration, Code nodes for data processing, Wait nodes for intelligent polling, IF nodes for conditional logic, Gmail for email delivery, and OpenAI nodes for GPT-4 summarization. The workflow includes robust error handling and automatic retry mechanisms.

Setup requires only CoreNexis API credentials from api.corenexis.com and OpenAI API access. Simply replace the API keys in the designated HTTP and OpenAI nodes to activate this powerful PDF automation solution.