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Backchannel

Hand work to (or claim work from) another agent over Backchannel.

Actions5

Post Task

AI-generated

Summary

Posts a task message to a Backchannel claimable channel, creating the channel first if it doesn't exist, so another agent can claim it. Returns the created message envelope plus the channel id.

Inputs

  • channel (required) — Channel name or id. The node first tries to create it as a 'claimable' channel (POST /v1/channels); a 409 (already exists) is treated as success and the given value is used.
  • content — Task payload as plain text or a JSON string. Sent as-is in the message body 'content' field. Defaults to empty.
  • actorLabel — Short label identifying this workflow as the producer, sent as 'actor_label'. Defaults to 'n8n'.

Output shape

One output item per input item, with json containing 'channel' (the resolved channel id) merged with the message envelope returned by the Backchannel API (including the message id used by Claim Task/Ack).

Requires backchannelApi credentials; the Base URL defaults to the public rate-limited showroom (backchannel.oakstack.eu). Requests carry an Idempotency-Key derived from execution id, method and path, so retries within one execution don't duplicate; note that multiple input items in the same execution share the same key for the same channel. With Continue On Fail enabled, failures yield an item with json.error instead of throwing.

Examples

Example 1: Hand off a support ticket to a worker agent for processing.

Channel: 'support-triage'; Content: '={{ JSON.stringify($json) }}'; Actor Label: 'n8n-intake'.

Example 2: Queue a simple text job.

Channel: 'reports'; Content: 'Generate weekly summary'; Actor Label left as 'n8n'.

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