Stop Building RAG the Hard Way — Pinecone Assistant in n8n
In this inaugural live stream, Jenna Pederson, Roie Schwaber-Cohen, and Arjun Patel step through building RAG workflows in n8n, first the hard way, then the easy way. They start by dissecting a DIY RAG pipeline using the Pinecone Vector Store node directly in n8n, exposing all the decisions you have to make yourself: chunking strategy, embedding model, update handling, and more. Then they rebuild the same workflow using the Pinecone Assistant node — showing how much complexity disappears. Along the way, they take a fun detour into multimodal embeddings (including Google's Gemini Embedding 2), a live-demo uploading a quantum mechanics PDF to test Pinecone Assistant's multimodal support, and take questions from live viewers. Whether you're a developer trying to build your first RAG pipeline or an n8n power user wondering when to use Pinecone's database vs. Assistant, this one's for you! Resources: 🔗 Assistant + n8n quickstart: https://docs.pinecone.io/guides/assistant/quickstart/n8n-quickstart 🔗 Announcement blog post: https://www.pinecone.io/blog/pinecone-assistant-node/ 🔗 More Pinecone n8n workflow templates: https://n8n.io/creators/pinecone/ Follow Pinecone: https://twitter.com/pinecone https://www.linkedin.com/company/pinecone-io/ https://discord.gg/qwQPPPZ4nz Follow n8n: https://twitter.com/n8n_io https://www.linkedin.com/company/n8n/ https://www.youtube.com/@n8n-io Follow Jenna Pederson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennapederson/ https://www.instagram.com/jennanerdsout/ https://twitter.com/jennapederson Follow Roie Schwaber-Cohen: https://www.linkedin.com/in/roiecohen/ Follow Arjun Patel: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arjunkirtipatel/ 0:00 – Kickoff 1:20 – What is Pinecone Assistant? RAG as a service explained 6:20 – What is n8n and who uses it? 8:00 – The DIY RAG workflow: database node 16:00 – Running a live query and seeing what goes wrong 27:00 – The easier way: Pinecone Assistant node in n8n 31:00 – Inside the Pinecone Console: creating an Assistant 38:00 – Live demo: querying with the Assistant node 46:00 – Multimodal support: uploading a quantum mechanics PDF 54:00 – Testing math equation retrieval (LaTeX/Hilbert Space) #Pinecone #n8n #RAG #PineconeAssistant #RetrievalAugmentedGeneration