Research web topics and email a Claude report via Gmail using SerpApi, Jina.ai and Firecrawl

Submit a research topic through a form and receive a professionally styled executive report in your inbox — fully automated, with built-in scraping resilience.

The workflow searches Google via SerpApi, scrapes each result with Jina.ai (free, no key needed), and uses Claude to extract key findings. If a page is blocked by a CAPTCHA or login wall, it automatically retries with Firecrawl. Blocked sources are gracefully skipped after two attempts. Once all sources are processed, Claude synthesises a structured executive report and delivers it as a styled HTML email via Gmail.

How it works

1. A web form collects the research topic, number of sources (5–7), and recipient email 2. SerpApi searches Google and returns a buffer of results (2× requested + 3 to survive domain filtering) 3. Junk domains are filtered out automatically (Reddit, YouTube, Twitter, PDFs, etc.) 4. Each URL is processed one at a time in a serial loop: - Round 1 — Jina.ai: free Markdown scraper, no API key required - Claude checks the content — if it's a CAPTCHA or wall, it returns RETRYNEEDED - Round 2 — Firecrawl: paid fallback scraper retries the blocked URL - If still blocked, the source is marked as unavailable and the loop continues 5. All extracted findings are aggregated and Claude writes a structured executive report (Executive Summary, Key Findings, Detailed Analysis, Data & Evidence, Conclusions, Sources) 6. The report is converted to styled HTML (with tables, headings, and lists) and emailed to the recipient

Setup steps

Required credentials

| Service | Where to get it | Where to paste it | |---|---|---| | SerpApi | [serpapi.com](https://serpapi.com) — free tier: 100 searches/month | SerpApi Search node → query param apikey | | Firecrawl | [firecrawl.dev](https://www.firecrawl.dev) — free tier: 500 pages/month | Firecrawl (Fallback) node → Authorization header | | Anthropic | n8n credentials → Anthropic API | Connect to: Claude Extractor, Claude Re-Analyzer, Claude Synthesizer | | Gmail | n8n credentials → Gmail OAuth2 | Connect to: Send Gmail |

Error handler (optional)