n8n GitHub Backup Workflow with Vivere Heartbeat Alerts

Never wonder “what changed?”—nightly backup of your n8n workflows to GitHub with Vivere Heartbeat alerts

This n8n GitHub Backup Workflow automatically exports all workflows from your n8n instance every night and stores them as JSON files in a GitHub repository. It also reports backup status to a Vivere Heartbeat monitor so you’re alerted if a run fails or is missed.

What this workflow does

• Runs nightly at 02:00 via a schedule trigger.
• Sends a “start” ping to your Vivere Heartbeat monitor to indicate the backup run has begun.
• Uses the n8n API to fetch all workflows and formats each workflow into a prettified JSON file named: workflows/<name>-<id>.json.
• For each workflow file, reads the existing file from GitHub and decides whether to:
  • Create it if it doesn’t exist,
  • Update it if it has changed (using the file SHA), or
  • Skip it when unchanged.
• Writes only new or changed workflow files back to GitHub using the GitHub Contents API, tracking each file outcome (created/updated/unchanged/failed).
• Summarizes the run and pings Vivere with success (counts + change log) or failure (including an error message), and stops the execution as failed if any backup fails.

Use cases

• SaaS operators and automation engineers want versioned workflow backups in GitHub.
• Teams need change visibility by capturing workflow updates as JSON snapshots.
• Monitoring backup health with Vivere Heartbeat for faster incident response when backups fail or don’t complete.

Technical details

• n8n API credential for exporting workflows.
• GitHub repository integration using GitHub Contents read/write (file SHA handling).
• Vivere Heartbeat monitor ping URL and API key for start/success/failure reporting.
• Nodes/tech stack: schedule trigger, set, code, if, n8n-nodes-vivere, and a sticky note for guidance.