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Automation Monitoring Workflow Web Scraping Notifications Task Automation Integration Platform

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Last Updated: 01-01-2023 12:00 AM (UTC)

Huginn

With nearly 50,000 GitHub stars and over 230 contributors since 2013, Huginn has established itself as the definitive open-source automation engine for developers who refuse to hand their workflow data to third-party cloud services. The platform lets you build agents that scrape websites, monitor RSS feeds, track weather via APIs, watch Twitter streams, aggregate news, detect price changes, and trigger notifications through email, SMS via Twilio, Slack webhooks, or social media posts to Twitter and Tumblr. Each agent creates and consumes JSON events, propagating them along a directed graph where complex multi-step workflows emerge from simple single-purpose components. The web interface provides visual agent management with drag-and-drop scenario building, real-time event logs, scheduling controls, and a built-in agent library covering dozens of use cases out of the box. Huginn supports Liquid templating for dynamic event transformation, regex-based content extraction, JavaScript-based data manipulation, and HumanTaskAgent for crowd-sourced workflow steps. Custom agents can be packaged as Ruby gems and loaded via the ADDITIONAL_GEMS environment variable without modifying core code. Deployment options include Docker with the official huginn/huginn all-in-one image or huginn/huginn-single-process for production multi-container setups with PostgreSQL or MySQL backends, plus native support for Heroku and OpenShift PaaS platforms. Running on a dedicated VPS on RepoCloud with guaranteed CPU, RAM, and SSD, full root SSH access, and a browser serial console. MIT licensed.

Huginn
Huginn
Huginn

Benefits

  • Complete Data Ownership and Privacy
  • All automation data stays on your server with zero third-party dependencies. No vendor lock-in, no per-task fees, and no external API calls unless you explicitly configure agent connections.
  • Extensible Agent Plugin System
  • Add custom agents as Ruby gems via the ADDITIONAL_GEMS environment variable. Over 230 contributors have built agents covering web scraping, API polling, social media, email, and SMS notifications.
  • Visual Directed Graph Workflows
  • Chain agents into complex multi-step automations through a directed event graph. Agents produce and consume JSON events with Liquid templating for dynamic content transformation and conditional routing.
  • Flexible Production Deployment
  • Deploy via Docker all-in-one image for evaluation or huginn-single-process for production with separate web and worker containers, PostgreSQL or MySQL backends, and horizontal worker scaling.

Features

  • Web Scraping Agents
  • Monitor websites for changes using CSS selectors and XPath expressions, with configurable polling intervals and regex-based content extraction for structured data capture.
  • Multi-Channel Notifications
  • Send alerts via email, SMS through Twilio, Slack webhooks, Twitter posts, Tumblr publishing, and custom HTTP POST endpoints with JSON or form-encoded payloads.
  • Event-Driven Scheduling
  • Rufus-Scheduler handles periodic agent execution while Delayed Job processes background tasks, supporting cron-like schedules, manual triggers, and event-propagated chain execution.
  • Scenario Management
  • Group related agents into reusable Scenarios that can be imported and exported as JSON files, enabling portable workflow templates and backup configurations.
  • Liquid Template Engine
  • Transform event payloads using Liquid templating with filters, conditionals, and loops for dynamic content formatting, data extraction, and conditional agent routing.