Can a prompt replace n8n Cloud?

Do not build an automation tool — deploy the real, open-source n8n. Run it via Docker Compose on a small VPS with a persistent volume for its data directory; SQLite storage is fine at personal scale, no need for a separate database server. Bind n8n to localhost and expose it through your existing reverse proxy on an HTTPS subdomain, relying on n8n's own login for access control. Set its encryption key explicitly as an environment variable and back that key up separately from everything else — losing it makes every stored credential permanently unreadable, which is worth stating loudly in the README. Set the webhook URL environment variable to your public subdomain so external services can actually trigger your workflows. Set up a nightly backup that exports workflows and credentials through n8n's own CLI and copies the data volume elsewhere, and an update script that pins a specific version, backs up first, then pulls and restarts — never update to an untagged latest build blindly. Import one or two starter workflows as a smoke test that the whole pipeline works end to end.

Do not build multi-user team features or high-availability scaling — this is one person's automation box, not a platform. Ops is the actual thing being taken on here; the README should say so plainly.