Publish LinkedIn posts from tech trends with Ollama AI quality checks

Description

Who is this for?

This workflow is for solopreneurs, founders, creators, and marketers who want a consistent LinkedIn presence without spending hours writing posts. Ideal for anyone in tech, SaaS, or AI who wants trend-aware content on autopilot.

What it does

Flow 1 — Daily Research (6 AM):
Fetches trending topics from Hacker News, Reddit (8 subreddits), and Product Hunt in parallel
Merges all sources, runs 7-layer deduplication, and ranks by relevance
AI generates 3 LinkedIn post drafts with different angles
Saves all drafts to a Google Sheets queue with status tracking

Flow 2 — Smart Publish (Tue/Wed/Thu at 9:30 AM):
Reads all unpublished drafts from Google Sheets
AI Selector picks the single best draft for today
Selected post passes through an AI Quality Gate (scored 1–10)
Approved posts publish to LinkedIn with a hashtag comment
Posts needing revision get auto-rewritten, then published
Rejected posts are skipped; Telegram notifications on every action

Setup steps

Google Sheets — Create a spreadsheet with columns: Post ID, Angle, Hook Line, Full Post, Hashtags, Trend Referenced, Word Count, Best Day, Posting Notes, Status, Created Date, Published Date, LinkedIn URL, AI Review, Revised Post, Dedup Stats, Generated At
Ollama — Install locally and pull your preferred model (e.g., ollama pull mistral)
LinkedIn OAuth — Register an app at developer.linkedin.com with w_member_social scope, get your Person URN
Telegram Bot — Create via @BotFather, get your bot token and chat ID
AI Prompts — Edit the system prompts in AI Writer, AI Selector, and AI Quality Gate nodes to match your persona and brand voice
Test — Run the research flow manually first, verify drafts appear in your sheet, then test the publish flow

Requirements

Self-hosted n8n (uses Ollama nodes)
Ollama running locally with at least one model installed
Google Sheets OAuth2 credentials
LinkedIn OAuth2 credentials with w_member_social permission
Telegram Bot credentials

How to customize

Tweak AI Selector weights in its system prompt (day alignment, angle variety, engagement potential)
Adjust Quality Gate thresholds (hook strength, value density, authenticity, engagement, brand safety)
Set any draft status to force_publish in Google Sheets to override AI selection
Add more sources by duplicating the fetch/normalize pattern
Change posting schedule by editing the cron expressions in the Schedule Trigger nodes