Anyone faced this issue with self hosted n8n?

Lost most of this week to a bug I was sure would take an hour.

Vapi kept losing the tools from my self-hosted n8n MCP server. They'd show up, then disappear when I refreshed. Sometimes just "No tools found." Never the same twice, which is the worst kind of bug.

I checked everything. Docker, TLS, Traefik logs, eventually sat there watching tcpdump like it owed me money. And the packets basically showed Vapi connecting, n8n handing over the full tool list, and then Vapi hanging up — and the next request couldn't find the session anymore.

Same workflows, zero changes, work perfectly on n8n Cloud. So it's not my setup. Looks like Vapi's MCP client and self-hosted n8n just don't agree on how to keep a session alive, and Cloud quietly handles it for you.

Genuinely asking: has anyone gotten Vapi working with self-hosted n8n MCP in production? What was different for you? Because I'm out of ideas I haven't already tried twice.

#n8n #Vapi #MCP #SelfHosted