Huginn is an open-source system for building agents that perform automated tasks online. Created by @cantino in 2013, it allows users to create agents that read the web, watch for events, and take actions on their behalf. Think of it as a self-hosted, hackable alternative to IFTTT or Zapier where you maintain full control over your data.
The name “Huginn” comes from Norse mythology—Huginn (“thought”) was one of Odin’s two ravens that flew across the world gathering information.
Core Concepts
Event-Driven Architecture
Huginn’s agents create and consume events, propagating them along a directed graph. This allows for complex automation workflows where:
- Source agents generate events (e.g., monitoring a website, receiving emails)
- Processing agents transform or filter events
- Action agents perform outputs (e.g., sending notifications, posting to APIs)
Agent Types
Huginn includes 68+ built-in agents covering various categories:
Data Sources
- RSS feeds, websites, IMAP email, FTP sites
- Twitter, Slack, Telegram, Jabber
- Dropbox, S3, local files
Data Processing
- JSON parsing, CSV handling, JavaScript execution
- Change detection, de-duplication, peak detection
- Sentiment analysis, translation (Google API)
- jq processing, Liquid templating
Actions & Outputs
- Email (single and digest), Push notifications (Pushbullet, Pushover)
- Webhooks, HTTP POST requests
- Slack, HipChat, Telegram, Jabber messaging
- Shell commands, MQTT publishing
- Google Calendar, Evernote, JIRA integration
Workflow Control
- Scheduling, delays, manual triggers
- Commander agents for agent management
- Gap detection, attribute differencing
Key Features
- Self-Hosted: Runs on your own server—you always know who has your data
- Extensible: Agents can be written as external gems via
ADDITIONAL_GEMS - Visual Workflow: Web interface shows event flow diagrams
- Flexible Deployment: Docker, Heroku, OpenShift, or manual installation
- Ruby/Rails: Built with Ruby on Rails, uses MySQL or PostgreSQL
Use Case Examples
From the official documentation:
- Track weather and get “Don’t forget your umbrella!” emails
- Monitor Twitter terms and detect discussion spikes (e.g., “machine learning” trending)
- Watch for travel or shopping deals
- Scrape websites and receive alerts on changes
- Send digest emails at specific times
- Track location over time
- Create Amazon Mechanical Turk workflows (HumanTaskAgent)
- Run custom JavaScript/CoffeeScript functions
Technical Stack
| Component | Technology |
|---|---|
| Framework | Ruby on Rails |
| Database | MySQL or PostgreSQL |
| Background Jobs | Foreman |
| Testing | RSpec, PhantomJS |
| Deployment | Docker, Heroku, OpenShift |
Getting Started
Docker (Recommended)
# See official Docker documentation
# https://github.com/huginn/huginn/blob/master/doc/docker/install.mdLocal Development
git clone https://github.com/huginn/huginn.git
cp .env.example .env
# Edit .env (set APP_SECRET_TOKEN)
bundle install
bundle exec rake db:create db:migrate db:seed
bundle exec foreman start
# Visit http://localhost:3000 (admin/password)Custom Agent Development
Huginn encourages writing complex/specific agents as external gems:
# See https://github.com/huginn/huginn_agent
# for the agent gem templateGeneral-purpose agents continue to be added to core, while specialized agents can be distributed as gems.
Comparison with Alternatives
| Feature | Huginn | n8n | Zapier |
|---|---|---|---|
| Self-hosted | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ |
| Open source | ✅ (MIT) | ✅ (Fair-code) | ❌ |
| Visual editor | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| No-code | Partial | ✅ | ✅ |
| Custom code | ✅ (Ruby, JS) | ✅ (JS) | Limited |
| Data ownership | Full | Full | Third-party |
Resources
License
MIT License - free for personal and commercial use.
Related Topics
- Artificial Intelligence
- Fabric AI - Another AI automation framework
- Ralph Loop - Autonomous AI agent patterns
- LangChain - LLM application development