Move beyond generic AI-generated content and create articles that are high-quality, factually reliable, and aligned with your unique expertise. This template orchestrates a sophisticated "research-first" content creation process. Instead of simply asking an AI to write an article from scratch, it first uses an AI planner to break your topic down into logical sub-questions.

It then queries a Lookio assistant—which you've connected to your own trusted knowledge base of uploaded documents—to build a comprehensive research brief. Only then is this fact-checked brief handed to a powerful AI writer to compose the final article, complete with source links. This is the ultimate workflow for scaling expert-level content creation.

Who is this for?

• Content marketers & SEO specialists: Scale the creation of authoritative, expert-level blog posts that are grounded in factual, source-based information.
• Technical writers & subject matter experts: Transform your complex internal documentation into accessible public-facing articles, tutorials, and guides.
• Marketing agencies: Quickly generate high-quality, well-researched drafts for clients by connecting the workflow to their provided brand and product materials.

What problem does this solve?

• Reduces AI "hallucinations": By grounding the entire writing process in your own trusted knowledge base, the AI generates content based on facts you provide, not on potentially incorrect information from its general training data.
• Ensures comprehensive topic coverage: The initial AI-powered "topic breakdown" step acts like an expert outliner, ensuring the final article is well-structured and covers all key sub-topics.
• Automates source citation: The workflow is designed to preserve and integrate source URLs from your knowledge base directly into the final article as hyperlinks, boosting credibility and saving you manual effort.
• Scales expert content creation: It effectively mimics the workflow of a human expert (outline, research, consolidate, write) but in an automated, scalable, and incredibly fast way.

How it works

This workflow follows a sophisticated, multi-step process to ensure the highest quality output:

1. Decomposition: You provide an article title and guidelines via the built-in form. An initial AI call then acts as a "planner," breaking down the main topic into an array of 5-8 logical sub-questions.
2. Fact-based research (RAG): The workflow loops through each of these sub-questions and queries your Lookio assistant. This assistant, which you have pre-configured by uploading your own documents, finds the relevant information and source links for each point.
3. Consolidation: All the retrieved question-and-answer pairs are compiled into a single, comprehensive research brief.
4. Final article generation: This complete, fact-checked brief is handed to a final, powerful AI writer (e.g., GPT-4o). Its instructions are clear: write a high-quality article using only the provided information and integrate the source links as hyperlinks where appropriate.

Building your own RAG pipeline VS using Lookio or alternative tools

Building a RAG system natively within n8n offers deep customization, but it requires managing a toolchain for data processing, text chunking, and retrieval optimization.

An alternative is to use a managed service like Lookio, which provides RAG functionality through an API. This approach abstracts the backend infrastructure for document ingestion and querying, trading the granular control of a native build for a reduction in development and maintenance tasks.

Implementing the template

1. Set up your Lookio assistant (Prerequisite):

Lookio is a platform for building intelligent assistants that leverage your organization's documents as a dedicated knowledge base.

• First, sign up at Lookio. You'll get 50 free credits to get started.
• Upload the documents you want to use as your knowledge base.
• Create a new assistant and then generate an API key.
• Copy your Assistant ID and your API Key for the next step.

2. Configure the workflow:

• Connect your AI provider (e.g., OpenAI) credentials to the two Language Model nodes.
• In the Query Lookio Assistant (HTTP Request) node, paste your Assistant ID in the body and add your Lookio API Key for authentication (we recommend using a Bearer Token credential).

3. Activate the workflow:

• Toggle the workflow to "Active" and use the built-in form to generate your first fact-checked article!

Taking it further

• Automate publishing: Connect the final Article result node to a Webflow or WordPress node to automatically create a draft post in your CMS.
• Generate content in bulk: Replace the Form Trigger with an Airtable or Google Sheet trigger to automatically generate a whole batch of articles from your content calendar.
• Customize the writing style: Tweak the system prompt in the final New content - Generate the AI output node to match your brand's specific tone of voice, add SEO keywords, or include specific calls-to-action.