ai-automation-consultant / Failure Lab

n8n Empty Items Expression

A Code node assumes the first item exists and crashes on an empty filtered result.

Failure LabDashboard

Category

n8n

Difficulty

intro

Last Run

none

Incident Brief

Diagnose the n8n expression failure and propose a safe fallback.

Broken State

A previous filter can return zero items, but the Code node reads items[0].json.email unconditionally.

Symptoms

  • The workflow succeeds for normal leads and crashes for spam-filtered submissions.
  • No review task is created for the empty result.

Trace

TypeError: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading 'json')
filtered_items=0 node=normalize_contact

Diagnosis