Guardrails in n8n with Superagent

Modern inbox automations touch real customer data. If a workflow reads raw mail, you risk leaking phone numbers, emails, addresses, card-like strings, and URLs into logs and prompts. Redaction gives you a safety buffer while keeping your agents useful.

This post shows the pattern we ship for the Email Triage Agent template in n8n. We insert a Superagent Redact call between the Gmail trigger and the classifier so every message is cleaned before the model sees it.

Prerequisites

Before you start, you'll need:

An n8n account (cloud or self-hosted)
A Superagent account and API key

The pattern

Gmail Trigger → HTTP Request (Superagent Redact) → Email Classification → Gmail label actions

Email Triage Workflow with Superagent Guardrails

What you get:

PII is scrubbed before inference
Prompts stay stable
Logs are safer to store and share

Why Superagent Redact

Targets common PII like emails, phones, addresses, URLs
Simple REST API
Works as a drop-in guardrail for any text step

Drop-in wiring in the template

Start from the Email Triage Agent in n8n.

Email Triage Workflow Template

Add one HTTP Request node between the trigger and the classifier. Configure:

Method: POST
URL: https://app.superagent.sh/api/redact
Auth: Bearer SUPERAGENT_API_KEY
Body JSON:
HTTP Request Body
```
{
  "text": "{{$json.text}}"
}
```

Here is the node in context:

Superagent HTTP node

Point your Email Classification prompt to the HTTP node output:

Email Classification Prompt

Categorize this email:

**From:** {{ $('New Email Trigger').item.json.from.value[0].address }}
**Subject:** {{ $('New Email Trigger').item.json.subject }}
**Content:**
{{ $json.choices[0].message.content }}

Please analyze this email and apply appropriate labels using the available tools.

Gmail Classifier Prompt

Test it

Send a test email with real PII to your Gmail account:

Test Email Content

My phone is 555-123-4567 and you can email me at john@example.com.
I live at 123 Main Street, New York, NY 10001.

Check the execution log in the HTTP Request node. The redacted output should look like:

Redacted Output

My phone is [PHONE_REDACTED] and you can email me at [EMAIL_REDACTED].
I live at [ADDRESS_REDACTED].

Your classifier sees clean text, but the workflow still routes the email correctly.

What you've protected

Customer support logs no longer leak PII
Model prompts stay consistent without random customer data
Compliance audits get cleaner (GDPR, HIPAA, SOC 2)
You can share workflow exports without scrubbing test data

Next steps

Set up alerts for high-sensitivity redactions
Join our Discord channel