🔥
Aug 22 • Wins 🌟
Client called at 11 PM: "Workflow takes 45 SECONDS per PDF. We have 10,000 due Monday." Here's how I optimized it to 3 seconds
Client called at 11 PM: "The workflow is taking 45 SECONDS per PDF. We have 10,000 to process by Monday."
Here's how I optimized it to 3 seconds (and saved the weekend):
THE EMERGENCY:
Law firm acquisition - needed to process 10,000 contracts by Monday morning for due diligence.
Current speed: 45 seconds each = 125 hours = impossible
THE DIAGNOSIS (1 hour of profiling):
Where time was wasted:
- PDF download: 2 seconds ✓ (fine)
- Generic text extraction: 38 seconds ❌ (disaster)
- Table parsing: 4 seconds ⚠️ (could improve)
- Database write: 1 second ✓ (fine)
The killer: Using basic extraction on 300-page contracts when we only needed 5 pages.
THE SURGERY (3 AM - 5 AM):
Fix #1: Intelligent Page Detection
- Preview first page, find table of contents
- Jump directly to signature pages and payment terms
- Skip the 280 pages of boilerplate
- Time saved: 35 seconds
Fix #2: Parallel Processing
- Split into 10 parallel n8n workflows
- Each handles 1,000 documents
- Load balanced across CPU cores
- Time saved: 80% overall
Fix #3: Better Extraction
- Understands context, not just text patterns
- Handles their weird merged cells perfectly
- Accuracy actually IMPROVED to 99.4%
Fix #4: Caching
- MD5 hash of each document
- Skip if already processed
- 1,100 were duplicates
- Time saved: 55 minutes
THE RESULT:
Saturday 6 AM test run:
- 10,000 contracts
- Total time: 8 hours 23 minutes
- Average per document: 3 seconds
- Accuracy: 99.4%
- Client reaction: "You're a f***ing wizard"
Sunday: I slept for 14 hours
THE TOOLS:
- n8n with SplitInBatches for parallel processing
- Redis for caching
- 1 very large coffee
Lesson learned: Most "slow" workflows are doing unnecessary work. Find what you actually need and skip everything else.
What's your worst performance nightmare? Let's optimize it together ⚡
31
17 comments
Client called at 11 PM: "Workflow takes 45 SECONDS per PDF. We have 10,000 due Monday." Here's how I optimized it to 3 seconds
skool.com/ai-automation-society
A community built to master no-code AI automations. Join to learn, discuss, and build the systems that will shape the future of work.
Leaderboard (30-day)
1
🔥
+2492
2
🔥
+1097
3
+1063
4
+826
5
🔥
+797
Powered by