Gmail RFQ PDF Quote Automation with Claude, Postgres & Slack

Automatically turn Gmail RFQs with PDF drawings into costed quote PDFs—using Claude, PostgreSQL, and Slack

This n8n workflow watches your Gmail inbox for RFQ emails that include PDF drawings, extracts the specifications with Anthropic Claude, enriches and ranks suppliers from PostgreSQL, generates tiered costed quote options as a PDF, emails the customer back via Gmail, and alerts engineering in Slack—while logging everything.

What this workflow does

• Runs every minute when a new RFQ email arrives in Gmail, loading default quoting thresholds and routing settings.
• Detects PDF attachments and uses Anthropic Claude to extract key specifications from the drawing.
• Validates completeness and confidence; if confidence is too low, it posts a Slack message for manual review.
• Normalizes extracted specs, calculates a complexity score, estimates material utilization, and pulls historical pricing and matching supplier capabilities from PostgreSQL.
• Scores and ranks suppliers, then prompts Claude to produce structured cost estimates for multiple pricing tiers.
• Builds a supplier comparison matrix and drafts a customer-ready quote with Claude.
• Generates a quote PDF, emails it back to the original sender via Gmail, and routes notifications by complexity to Slack for engineering.
• Logs RFQ outcomes to PostgreSQL and updates supplier capacity based on the processed/selected supplier.

Use cases

• Manufacturing or engineering teams receiving frequent RFQs with PDF drawings from customers.
• SaaS operators who want Gmail RFQ automation with supplier pricing intelligence stored in PostgreSQL.
• Operations teams that need human review when Claude confidence is low, with clear Slack visibility.

Technical details

• n8n trigger: checks Gmail every minute for new RFQ emails.
• Nodes/integrations: gmail, if, set, code, merge, slack (plus Anthropic Claude for PDF specification extraction and quote drafting).
• Data layer: PostgreSQL for thresholds, historical pricing, supplier capabilities, processing logs, and capacity updates.
• Setup: connect Gmail credentials to enable inbound RFQ detection and outbound quote email.