Command line

export

workflow-render export workflow.json -o workflow.svg
workflow-render export workflow.json -o workflow.png --scale 3

• The output format follows the file extension: .svg or .png.
• --theme dark renders n8n's dark canvas. The default is light.
• --scale N sets the PNG size multiplier. The default is 2. It is an error with an .svg output.
• The SVG is self-contained. Icons are inlined and fonts are embedded, so it looks the same in a browser, an <img> tag or a file preview.
• The same input always produces the same SVG, byte for byte.
• --overlay <file> draws a canvas overlay over the workflow: a ring and a count badge on each node a tool flagged. workflow-lint lint wf.json --format canvas-overlay > findings.json produces one.
• The root <svg> carries a provenance stamp as data-* attributes: the emulated n8n version (data-descriptions-version), the tool (data-tool-name, data-tool-version), a hash of the input (data-input-hash, sha256: + 16 hex characters of the key-sorted JSON) and the workflow's id, name and versionId when the export has them (data-workflow-id, data-workflow-name, data-workflow-version-id). meta.instanceId, credentials and webhook ids are never written.
• --redact renders from a redacted copy: sticky-note text, node subtitles and the provenance stamp come from the masked data, and the overlay's texts are masked too. --mask, --keep and --keep-data work as for redact. The report goes to stderr.

redact

workflow-render redact workflow.json -o workflow.public.json
workflow-render redact execution.json -o - --mask 'n8n\.mycompany\.com' > public.json

Writes a copy of a workflow or execution with what you would not publish masked in place as [redacted: <kind>], so the structure stays readable and the copy still renders. The input is never changed, and -o cannot be the input file.

• --mask '<regex>' masks more. --keep '<regex>' protects the text it matches: other text in the same value is still masked, an email, token or URL credential is kept only if the pattern covers all of it (to keep ada@example.com, write that address, not just the domain), and a secret field is left alone only when the pattern matches its whole value. Credentials, identifiers and item data are masked regardless. Both can be repeated, and both are your own regular expressions, so keep them simple.
• --keep-data leaves pinned and execution item values in place; they are still scanned for the patterns above.
• -o - writes the JSON to stdout.
• An array of workflows (n8n export:workflow --all) or an API list ({ "data": [...] }) is redacted workflow by workflow. Anything else is scanned with the text patterns only, and the report says so.

It prints what it masked and the hosts still present in URLs:

masked 14 values in workflow.json
  credential      2  Store › credentials.postgres, Notify › credentials.slackApi
  identifier      4  id, versionId, …
  email           2  Format Reply › parameters.assignments.assignments[0].value, …
  data            1  pinData › Webhook
hosts kept: api.example.com, db.example.test

Masking is pattern-based, so read the report before you publish. It does not catch a person's name in free text, a phone number, a short secret in a field with an ordinary name, or your own n8n hostname: add --mask for anything the report shows you would rather hide. Node names are not masked, because connections refer to them.

Export every workflow in CI

for f in workflows/*.json; do
  npx workflow-render export "$f" -o "renders/$(basename "${f%.json}").png"
done

view

workflow-render view workflow.json
workflow-render view execution.json --port 4777

Expected output:

workflow-render viewing execution.json
  http://127.0.0.1:4777/
Press Ctrl+C to stop.

• The viewer binds to 127.0.0.1 only.
• Without --port, it picks a free port.

Executions

Give view or export an execution instead of a workflow and the canvas shows the run.

• Executed nodes take the status colour.
• Edge labels carry the item counts.
• Double-click a node to open the inspector: input, parameters and output, with Schema, Table and JSON views.
• A failed node shows its error and stack.
• Binary data is named, never fetched.

Exit codes and warnings

Warnings go to stderr, prefixed warning:. The file is still written.

workflow-render export dangling.json -o dangling.svg

Expected output:

wrote dangling.svg
warning: connection to unknown node "Ghost" dropped

Getting the JSON out of n8n