Etsy AI Self-Hosted Dashboard

A 100% self-hosted automation stack for managing multiple Etsy shops (digital printables + POD physical items). Runs entirely on your own GPU server — no cloud APIs after setup.

Status: MVP (v1). The AI Listing Generator workflow + ToolJet AI Tools tab are end-to-end functional. Etsy / Printify / Printful / image generation / promotion scheduler are scaffolded as stub workflows ready for extension. See Roadmap for what's wired vs. stubbed.

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Architecture

                    ┌──────────────────┐
   Browser ──────►  │ ToolJet (3000)   │  ── REST/Webhook ──┐
                    └──────────────────┘                    │
                                                            ▼
   Browser ──────►  ┌──────────────────┐    ┌────────────────────────┐
                    │ n8n (5678)       │ ── │ Postgres (5432)        │
                    └──┬───────┬────┬──┘    │  n8n / tooljet /        │
                       │       │    │       │  etsy_app DBs           │
                       ▼       ▼    ▼       └────────────────────────┘
                  ┌────────┐ ┌─────────┐ ┌─────────────────────┐
                  │ Ollama │ │ ComfyUI │ │ Etsy / Printify /    │
                  │ 11434  │ │ 8188    │ │ Printful (external) │
                  └────────┘ └─────────┘ └─────────────────────┘
                       ▲                            ▲
                       │                            │
                  ┌────┴────────────────────────────┘
                  │ Caddy 80/443  (optional reverse proxy)
                  └─────────────────────────────────────────

All inter-service traffic stays on the etsy_net Docker bridge. ComfyUI is exposed only to 127.0.0.1 because its API has no auth.

Why not Ollama for image generation? Ollama runs text/multimodal LLMs only — it cannot run Flux or Stable Diffusion 3. ComfyUI is the local image-gen backend; it exposes a /prompt HTTP API that n8n calls directly.

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Prerequisites

• Linux host with Docker Engine ≥ 24 and Compose v2.
• NVIDIA GPU with ≥ 16 GB VRAM (for Flux-dev and Mistral 7B).
  • Install the NVIDIA Container Toolkit: https://docs.nvidia.com/datacenter/cloud-native/container-toolkit/
  • Verify: docker run --rm --gpus all nvidia/cuda:12.4.0-base-ubuntu22.04 nvidia-smi.
• ~80 GB free disk (Postgres + n8n + Ollama models + Flux checkpoints).
• Outbound internet access on first run (model downloads, Etsy/POD APIs).

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Quickstart

# 1. Configure secrets
cp .env.example .env
$EDITOR .env   # set POSTGRES_PASSWORD, N8N_ENCRYPTION_KEY,
               #     TOOLJET_SECRET_KEY_BASE, TOOLJET_LOCKBOX_KEY
               # generate secrets with: openssl rand -hex 32   (or 64 where noted)

# 2. Bring up Postgres first so the init schema runs
docker compose up -d postgres
docker compose logs -f postgres   # wait for "database system is ready"

# 3. Bring up Ollama and pull text models
docker compose up -d ollama
./scripts/pull-models.sh

# 4. Bring up the rest of the stack
docker compose up -d              # n8n, tooljet, comfyui
./scripts/import-workflows.sh     # bulk-imports all 8 workflow JSONs into n8n

# 5. Configure n8n credentials (one-time, in the n8n UI)
#    - Open http://localhost:5678  (basic auth from .env)
#    - Credentials → New → Postgres
#        Name: "Postgres etsy_app"
#        Host: postgres   Database: etsy_app
#        User: ${POSTGRES_USER}   Password: ${POSTGRES_PASSWORD}
#    - Open workflow "01 - AI Listing Generator" → Activate

# 6. Configure ToolJet (one-time, in the ToolJet UI)
#    - Open http://localhost:3000, create the first admin account
#    - Workspace constants → add N8N_URL = http://n8n:5678
#    - Apps → Import → tooljet-apps/etsy_dashboard.json
#      (this file is a build spec; if your CE version rejects the schema,
#       use it to recreate the pages manually — the queries and components
#       are fully specified)
#    - Set the etsy_app_db data source password to ${POSTGRES_PASSWORD}

Smoke test

curl -X POST http://localhost:5678/webhook/listing-generate \
  -H 'content-type: application/json' \
  -d '{"shop_id":1,"niche":"vintage botanical printables","kind":"printable","cost":0}'

Expected: JSON with title, 13 tags, description, suggested_price, plus a row inserted into etsy_app.listings (visible in ToolJet's Listings tab).

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ComfyUI models

ComfyUI ships without checkpoints. Drop weights into comfyui/models/checkpoints/:

mkdir -p comfyui/models/checkpoints
# Flux-dev fp8 (~17 GB, gated on Hugging Face — accept the license first)
huggingface-cli download black-forest-labs/FLUX.1-dev \
  flux1-dev.safetensors --local-dir comfyui/models/checkpoints
# OR a smaller starter model:
huggingface-cli download stabilityai/stable-diffusion-xl-base-1.0 \
  sd_xl_base_1.0.safetensors --local-dir comfyui/models/checkpoints
docker compose restart comfyui

Sanity check: curl http://localhost:8188/system_stats returns GPU info.

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Getting API keys

Etsy

1. Sign in at https://www.etsy.com/developers/your-apps and create an app.
2. Copy the Keystring (client id) and Shared Secret.
3. Add the redirect URI from .env (ETSY_REDIRECT_URI) to the app's "Callback URLs" list.
4. Paste both values into .env and restart n8n: docker compose restart n8n.

Printify

• Profile → Connections → "Generate new token" → set PRINTIFY_API_KEY in .env.

Printful

• https://developers.printful.com/ → Tokens → create a personal token → set PRINTFUL_API_KEY in .env.

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External access (optional)

Caddy + Let's Encrypt

Set PUBLIC_DOMAIN and LETSENCRYPT_EMAIL in .env, point DNS at the host, then:

docker compose --profile proxy up -d caddy

Reachable at https://dashboard.<domain> and https://n8n.<domain>.

ngrok (dev only)

ngrok http 3000   # ToolJet
ngrok http 5678   # n8n webhooks (use this URL as ETSY_REDIRECT_URI)

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Security best practices

• Never commit .env. .gitignore excludes it.
• N8N_ENCRYPTION_KEY encrypts every credential stored in n8n. Rotating it invalidates all stored credentials — only rotate on a fresh install.
• Keep ComfyUI bound to 127.0.0.1 (default in docker-compose.yml). It has no auth; never expose :8188 publicly.
• Put n8n + ToolJet behind Caddy basic-auth, or an OIDC sidecar (oauth2-proxy / Authelia), before exposing them to the internet.
• Use a dedicated Postgres role per app in production; the MVP uses a single superuser for simplicity.
• Rotate Etsy / Printify / Printful tokens periodically and revoke them in the provider UIs when removing a shop.

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Roadmap

#	Workflow	v1 status	Notes
1	AI Listing Generator	✅ wired	Mistral via Ollama; inserts draft listing
2	AI Visual Studio	🟡 stub	Implement POST /prompt to ComfyUI + poll history
3	AI Ads Studio	🟡 stub	Combines wf 1 + wf 2 outputs into scheduled_posts
4	Etsy OAuth Callback	🟡 stub	PKCE token exchange → upsert shops
5	Etsy Listing Publish	🟡 stub	Create listing via Etsy v3 API
6	Etsy Order Sync (cron)	🟡 stub	Pull receipts every 15 min, route POD orders to wf 7
7	POD Route Order	🟡 stub	Branch on pod_provider, call Printify or Printful
8	Promotion Scheduler (cron)	🟡 stub	Dispatch due scheduled_posts

ToolJet tabs Dashboard / Orders / Analytics depend on workflow 6 emitting data into orders + analytics_daily; once that's live, swap the placeholder text for the relevant Postgres queries.

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File layout

.
├── docker-compose.yml            # 6 services: postgres, n8n, tooljet, ollama, comfyui, caddy
├── .env.example                  # all required env vars
├── db/init/01_schema.sql         # creates n8n + tooljet + etsy_app DBs and tables
├── workflows/                    # n8n workflow exports (1 fully wired, 7 stubs)
├── tooljet-apps/etsy_dashboard.json   # ToolJet app build spec
├── scripts/
│   ├── pull-models.sh            # ollama pull loop
│   └── import-workflows.sh       # n8n CLI bulk import
├── caddy/Caddyfile               # optional reverse proxy
└── README.md

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Troubleshooting

• n8n workflow 01 fails at "Insert Product" → the Postgres etsy_app credential isn't configured. Create it in n8n (see Quickstart step 5).
• Ollama returns non-JSON → the model may not honour format=json. Switch OLLAMA_MODELS to qwen2.5:7b-instruct-q4_K_M and re-pull.
• ComfyUI container exits immediately → host doesn't have GPU access. Run nvidia-smi inside nvidia/cuda first; fix the toolkit setup.
• ToolJet rejects the app JSON on import → ToolJet's export format is version-coupled. Use tooljet-apps/etsy_dashboard.json as the spec and recreate pages/queries manually in the UI.