Extract PDF Data with Claude, Gmail & Airtable (n8n Workflow)

Extract PDF data with Claude, Gmail & Airtable—automatically route what you need for review

This n8n workflow pulls PDF documents from an upload form or Gmail attachments, extracts the text, uses Anthropic Claude to detect the document type and extract structured fields, then saves the results in Airtable—with Slack notifications for success or missing/low-confidence fields.

What this workflow does

• Triggers when a PDF is uploaded via an n8n form or when a new Gmail message arrives containing a PDF attachment.
• Extracts and normalizes inputs, including source, submitter, an optional document type hint, and the raw extracted text.
• Calls Anthropic Messages API (Claude) with the extracted text to:
  • auto-detect the document type when needed,
  • extract type-specific structured fields,
  • identify missing required fields and return a confidence score.
• Validates the Claude JSON response and builds a structured output containing detected type, extracted fields, validation notes, and confidence.
• Routes results:
  • If required fields are missing, confidence is below 0.6, or type is unknown, it posts a Slack alert and logs the item to an Airtable “Needs Review” table.
  • Otherwise, it routes by type (Invoice/Resume/Contract/Application) and creates a record in the corresponding Airtable table.
• Notifies success in Slack after the document is processed and stored.

Use cases

• Turn inbound invoices, contracts, applications, or resumes into structured Airtable records without manual copying.
• Review low-confidence extractions via Slack using a dedicated Airtable “Needs Review” queue.
• Speed up SaaS back-office workflows by automatically processing PDF submissions from forms or Gmail.

Technical details

• Anthropic (Claude): HTTP request using Anthropic API key credentials for text-to-structured extraction.
• Gmail: OAuth2 integration to detect and fetch PDF attachments from new messages.
• Airtable: Creates records in type-specific tables; writes failures to “Needs Review”.
• Slack: Posts alerts for missing fields/low confidence and confirmation on success.
• n8n nodes used: if, set, code, gmail, merge, slack.

Setup: Add your Anthropic API key to the n8n credential referenced by the HTTP request (or update the request headers accordingly), then configure Airtable tables and Slack alerts.