Chat with PDF docs using AI (quoting sources)
Ready for 3.0Ready for 3.0. This template uses no nodes that n8n 3.0 removes. No removed nodes, versions or helpers found. Static check, last run 2026-10-19.
Nodes used (11)
- Manual Trigger
n8n-nodes-base.manualTrigger - Pinecone Vector Store
@n8n/n8n-nodes-langchain.vectorStorePinecone - Chat Trigger
@n8n/n8n-nodes-langchain.chatTrigger - OpenAI Chat Model
@n8n/n8n-nodes-langchain.lmChatOpenAi - Edit Fields (Set)
n8n-nodes-base.set - Google Drive
n8n-nodes-base.googleDrive - Default Data Loader
@n8n/n8n-nodes-langchain.documentDefaultDataLoader - Embeddings OpenAI
@n8n/n8n-nodes-langchain.embeddingsOpenAi - Recursive Character Text Splitter
@n8n/n8n-nodes-langchain.textSplitterRecursiveCharacterTextSplitter - Code
n8n-nodes-base.code - Information Extractor
@n8n/n8n-nodes-langchain.informationExtractor
What it does
This workflow allows you to ask questions about a PDF document. The answers are provided by an AI model of your choice, and the answer includes a citation pointing to the information it used. You can use n8n’s built-in chat interface to ask the questions, or you could customise this workflow to use another one (e.g. Slack, Teams, etc.) Example The workflow is set up with the Bitcoin whitepaper. So you could ask things like: Question: “Which email provider does the creator of Bitcoin use?“ Answer: “GMX Bitcoin whitepaper.pdf, lines 1-35” Requirements 1. A Pinecone account (they have a free tier at the time of writing that is easily enough for this workflow) 2. Access to a large language model (e.g. an OpenAI account) Customizing this workflow The workflow only reads in one document, but you could customise it to read in all the documents in a folder (or more). The workflow is set up to use GPT 3.5, but you could swap that out for any other model (including self-hosted ones).