n8n

Connect n8n’s AI Agent to the Ayrshare MCP Server to publish, schedule, and analyze across 13 social networks, with no per-platform API code.

n8n is where you wire your tools together. Ayrshare is the one API that publishes to Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok, Pinterest, Reddit, Threads, Bluesky, Telegram, Google Business Profile, Snapchat, and X in a single call. Connect them with the Ayrshare MCP Server and your n8n AI Agent can run the whole loop on its own: draft a post, validate it against each network’s rules, publish or schedule it, then read the analytics back.

Because the MCP Server is a hosted Streamable HTTP endpoint, you connect it with n8n’s built-in MCP Client Tool node. There is nothing to host, no custom code, and no community node to install. You point one node at one URL and your agent gets all 27 social tools.

Download the n8n starter workflow

The workflow shown above, ready to import: Chat Trigger, AI Agent, an Anthropic chat model, and the Ayrshare MCP node pre-wired with the validate-first system prompt.

To use it: in n8n, Workflows → Import from file, select the JSON, then create the two credentials it expects (a Bearer Auth credential holding your Ayrshare key, and an Anthropic API credential). The two warning badges clear once the credentials are attached. Self-hosted instances need outbound access to api.ayrshare.com and your model provider.

This guide covers the MCP-first path end to end. If you would rather build a fixed, non-agent workflow, there is a short REST fallback at the end.

Why MCP instead of writing API calls

You can call Ayrshare’s REST API directly from an HTTP Request node, which is fine for fixed, predictable workflows. The MCP Server earns its place when an LLM is in the loop:

• The agent picks the tool. Describe the goal (“publish this to our business channels and schedule the follow-up for Tuesday”) and the agent chooses validate_post, create_post, and the right parameters itself.
• Validation before anything goes live. validate_post dry-runs your content against each platform’s length, format, and media rules, so the agent does not ship a post a network will reject.
• One call, many networks. A single create_post fans out to every linked platform.
• Platform changes are Ayrshare’s problem. When a network changes its API, Ayrshare maintains the integration and your workflow keeps working.
• Same rules as the REST API. Every MCP tool call runs in-process through the same Ayrshare API chain: same auth, rate limits, quota, and validation. There is no separate behavior to learn.

How it connects

The AI Agent node is the brain. The MCP Client Tool sub-node attaches to it, connects to the Ayrshare MCP Server at https://api.ayrshare.com/mcp, discovers the available tools, and exposes them to the agent. When the agent acts, the node dispatches the call to Ayrshare, which publishes to the networks.

Trigger  ->  AI Agent (+ Chat Model)  ->  MCP Client Tool  ->  Ayrshare MCP Server  ->  13 networks

For the endpoint, transport, and authentication details, see Connect & Setup. For the full tool list, see the Tool Catalog.

Prerequisites

• An n8n instance (Cloud or self-hosted) on a recent version with the AI Agent and MCP Client Tool nodes. The MCP Client Tool node is built in. You do not need a community node, because the Ayrshare server speaks Streamable HTTP.
• An Ayrshare account and API key (Dashboard → Settings → API Key), or start a free trial.
• At least one social account linked in Ayrshare. The agent can only publish where you have connected.
• A chat model credential for the AI Agent node (Anthropic, OpenAI, etc.).
• (Optional) A Business or Enterprise plan if you will manage multiple clients via sub-profiles.

Set up the MCP Client Tool node

1. Add an AI Agent node

   Open or create a workflow and add an AI Agent node (under the Advanced AI nodes).

2. Attach the MCP Client Tool node

   On the AI Agent node, click the Tool connector and add an MCP Client Tool node. Configure it:

   Field	Value
   Endpoint	https://api.ayrshare.com/mcp
   Server Transport	HTTP Streamable
   Authentication	Bearer Auth
   Tools to Include	All (or Selected to expose only specific tools)

3. Add your Ayrshare key as a Bearer credential

   For Credential, create a new Bearer Auth credential and paste your Ayrshare API key as the token. n8n sends it as Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY. When you save, n8n connects and lists the 27 tools.

4. Wire up the chat model and system prompt

   Attach a Chat Model sub-node and select your model credential. Give the agent a system prompt that sets the rules, for example:

   You are a social media assistant with access to Ayrshare tools. Before publishing anything, always call validate_post first and report any issues. Only call create_post after validation passes. Default to the platforms the user names; if none are named, ask. Never invent media URLs; only use URLs the user provides, and confirm them with validate_media when in doubt.

5. Add a trigger

   For testing, the Manual Trigger or Chat Trigger is easiest. For production, use whatever kicks off the workflow (schedule, webhook, form, new row in a sheet).

Use HTTP Streamable, not SSE. The Ayrshare MCP Server uses the modern Streamable HTTP transport and is stateless. n8n’s SSE option is deprecated, and the server rejects the SSE stream. Always choose HTTP Streamable.

The tool surface

Your agent sees all 27 tools through the one MCP node. You rarely call them by name; you describe intent and the agent selects. The domains are Posts, History, Analytics, Comments, Messages, Profiles, Media, Generate, Webhooks, and Errors. For the complete list with each tool’s purpose and scope, see the Tool Catalog.

Two stand out for safety: validate_post dry-runs a post with the same input as create_post but publishes nothing, and explain_error turns any Ayrshare error code into a plain-English cause and fix, so the agent can self-diagnose.

Example 1: draft, validate, and publish from a chat message

The “hello world” of this integration. Trigger the workflow with a chat message or form, and let the agent do the rest.

• Trigger: Chat Trigger (or a Form Trigger with a “what should we post?” field).
• Prompt to the agent: “Write a friendly launch announcement for our new analytics dashboard and publish it to LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. Validate first.”

What the agent does on its own: it calls validate_post with your copy and the three platforms; if Instagram flags a missing image it tells you instead of failing silently; once validation passes it calls create_post and returns the live post URLs. Because validation runs first, you find out about a problem before anything is public.

Example 2: auto-publish new content across your channels

Turn a content source into multi-network posts without touching it.

• Trigger: RSS Read node on your blog feed, a webhook from your CMS, or a new row in Google Sheets or Airtable.
• AI Agent step: “Summarize this article into a short social post with 2 to 3 relevant hashtags, then validate and publish to LinkedIn, Facebook, and Threads.”
• Optionally add a human-in-the-loop approval before the create_post step so a person signs off.

You can lean on recommend_hashtags for data-driven tags and generate_post if you want Ayrshare to draft the copy rather than your chat model.

Example 3: weekly analytics digest

Run the loop in reverse: read performance and report it.

• Trigger: Schedule node, for example every Monday at 8am.
• AI Agent step: “Pull last week’s account analytics for LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook, and summarize the top 3 posts by engagement.”
• The agent uses get_social_network_analytics for account-level numbers and get_post_analytics for individual posts, then you pipe its summary to a Slack, Gmail, or Notion node.

A note on cadence: most posts get the bulk of their engagement in the first 24 hours, and metrics do not update by the second. A daily or weekly schedule is plenty. Do not poll analytics every few minutes or you will hit rate limits for no new data.

Acting on behalf of clients (multi-tenant)

If you manage social for multiple clients, Ayrshare’s profiles let one account post to many separate sets of linked accounts. On a Business or Enterprise plan you have two ways to target a client from n8n:

• Per connection: add a Profile-Key header to the MCP Client Tool node (use Multiple Headers auth so you can send both Authorization and Profile-Key). Every call on that node then acts as that client. Good when a workflow serves one client.
• Per call: many tools accept a profileKey argument, which the agent can set per action. When both are present, the per-call argument wins. Good when one workflow routes across clients.

To onboard a new client, the agent can call create_profile and then generate_jwt_social_linking_url to mint a hosted page where the client links their own accounts. No credentials pass through your workflow.

Posting to X/Twitter

In n8n, switch the MCP Client Tool node’s Authentication to Multiple Headers and add the two X-Twitter-OAuth1-* headers alongside Authorization. It is a one-time setup per Ayrshare account, and the same key pair applies to every profile. For everything else (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok, and the rest) no extra headers are needed. See Connect & Setup → X/Twitter BYO credentials.

Keep a human in the loop

The MCP tools make it trivial for an agent to publish, which is exactly why you should gate it. Two cheap safeguards:

• Always validate first. Bake “call validate_post before create_post” into the system prompt. Validation publishes nothing and catches platform-rule violations early.
• Add an approval step. Insert n8n’s Send and Wait for Response (Slack or email) node between the draft and the publish action so a person approves before anything goes live. For scheduled content, the agent can use update_post to revise an awaiting-approval post.

REST fallback (no agent)

If you want a fixed, deterministic workflow with no LLM, skip MCP and call the REST API with an HTTP Request node:

• Method: POST
• URL: https://api.ayrshare.com/api/post
• Authentication: Header Auth, Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY

{
  "post": "Excited to announce our new feature!",
  "platforms": ["facebook", "linkedin", "instagram"],
  "mediaUrls": ["https://example.com/image.jpg"],
  "scheduleDate": "2026-07-01T10:00:00Z"
}

Use the API host api.ayrshare.com, not the dashboard host app.ayrshare.com. (app.ayrshare.com will accept API calls, but it is not the documented endpoint and can return intermittent 502/504 gateway errors, so always use api.ayrshare.com.) The same pattern works for the other REST endpoints. This is the right tool when the workflow is fully predictable and you do not need an agent deciding anything.

Troubleshooting

Symptom	Likely cause	Fix
Tool call returns 403 / code 102, “API Key not valid”	Bad or missing API key	Check the Bearer Auth credential holds your exact Ayrshare key. Re-save the node after changing it.
n8n cannot connect to the MCP server	Wrong transport or endpoint	Endpoint must be https://api.ayrshare.com/mcp; transport must be HTTP Streamable, not SSE.
X/Twitter post fails with error 419	Missing X BYO credentials	Add the two X-Twitter-OAuth1-* headers via Multiple Headers auth.
Post fails for one platform only	That network is not linked, or a required field is missing	Link it in the dashboard; add title for YouTube, title + subreddit for Reddit, mediaUrls for Instagram.
Instagram post rejected	No media	Instagram requires mediaUrls for most post types. Have the agent confirm with validate_media.
Media attached as a file or binary does not appear	MCP is JSON-only	Reference media by public mediaUrls URL; the MCP path does not accept file uploads. Confirm the URL with validate_media.
Calls work, but act on the wrong client	Profile targeting	Set a Profile-Key header (per connection) or profileKey argument (per call); the argument wins if both are set.
429 Too Many Requests	Polling too often	Reduce analytics and comment polling frequency; metrics do not update by the second.
Config change did not take effect	MCP connection initializes at session start	Re-save the node or restart the workflow after changing the key or headers.

You can also expose the explain_error tool to the agent so it decodes any Ayrshare error code into a cause and fix on its own.

Next steps

Connect & Setup

Endpoint, transport, authentication, profile targeting, and BYO credentials.

Tool Catalog

The 27 tools grouped by domain, with scope and purpose.

MCP Server

What the MCP Server is and how it maps to the Ayrshare API.

Claude Code Plugin

The same server, packaged for Claude Code.