Production AI Playbook: Deterministic Steps & AI Steps (2 of 5)

Validate AI-generated outputs before your workflow acts on them. This template sends a support ticket through AI classification, parses the JSON response, and checks that categories, urgency levels, and confidence scores are all within valid ranges.

What you'll do - Send a support ticket to the AI for classification. - Watch the Code node parse and validate the AI's JSON response against a defined schema. - See how valid outputs continue through the workflow while invalid ones get flagged.

What you'll learn - How to structure AI prompts to return valid JSON - How Code nodes parse and validate AI output against expected schemas - How to check confidence scores, valid categories, and urgency levels programmatically - How to build retry and fallback paths for malformed AI responses

Why it matters AI models don't always return what you expect. A confidence score of "high" instead of 0.95, a missing category field, or a malformed JSON response can silently break downstream steps. This template catches those failures before they propagate.

This template is a learning companion to the Production AI Playbook, a series that explores strategies, shares best practices, and provides practical examples for building reliable AI systems in n8n.

[https://go.n8n.io/PAP-D&A-Blog](https://go.n8n.io/PAP-D&A-Blog)