Is n8n Workflow Building Dead? (Or just evolving?)

I’ve been seeing a massive amount of buzz lately claiming that Claude Code and "antigravity" tools are making manual automation building obsolete. The narrative is that you can just describe a complex process in plain English and the AI will spit out a perfect, production-ready JSON for n8n or even build the agentic flow itself.

As someone deep in the weeds—currently self-hosting n8n and Chatwoot on a Hostinger KVM 4 server via Easypanel—I have mixed feelings.

On one hand, using Claude (Sonnet 3.5/Opus) to generate node snippets or regex is a total game-changer for speed. On the other hand, the "one-shot" complete workflow dream often hits reality hard when you deal with:

Infrastructure & Auth: AI is great at logic but often hallucinations when it comes to specific OAuth flows or server-side credentials.
Deterministic vs. Probabilistic: Real business workflows need to be 100% reliable. AI agents can be unpredictable, whereas a well-designed n8n workflow offers "predictable failure modes" that are easier to debug.
The 90:10 Rule: I’m finding that 90% of a production-ready system is actually the "boring" stuff like error handling, retries, and data mapping—things AI still struggles to get perfect in one go.

My question to the group: Are you guys actually moving away from "painting nodes" in favor of pure AI generation? Or is n8n becoming the "execution layer" where we act more like architects/auditors rather than builders?

Keen to hear if anyone has successfully replaced their manual build process with a Claude-led workflow!

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