Manage AI coding sessions from Matrix with YouTrack and GitLab

Who is this for

Development teams using Claude Code who want a chat-ops interface for
project management. Instead of SSH-ing into a server to run Claude,
your whole team interacts with it through a Matrix chat room — with
issue tracking and CI/CD pipeline visibility built in.

What it does

• Polls a Matrix room every 30 seconds and routes commands to handlers
• Forwards messages to Claude Code sessions via SSH, posts responses back
• Manages multiple concurrent sessions — start, pause, resume, switch, end
• Updates YouTrack issues directly from chat (change state, post comments, query status)
• Fetches GitLab CI pipeline status and logs, retries failed pipelines
• Reports server load and Claude process status
• Tracks sessions in SQLite with lock-based concurrency and cooldown guards

Template Image

How it works

The workflow polls a Matrix room for new messages. A command router
parses !commands and dispatches them to the right handler:

• Regular messages resume an active Claude Code session and post the response
• !session — manage sessions (current, list, done, cancel, pause, resume, switch, log)
• !issue — update YouTrack issues (status, info, start, stop, verify, done, close, comment)
• !pipeline — fetch GitLab CI pipeline status and logs, retry failed pipelines
• !system — report server load and running processes
• !help — show command reference

Requirements

• Matrix homeserver with a bot account (E2EE must be disabled —
  n8n cannot decrypt Matrix messages)
• YouTrack instance with API token
• GitLab instance with API token
• Linux server with Claude Code CLI installed, accessible via SSH
• n8n self-hosted with SSH private key credentials configured

This is a self-hosted template. It requires your own infrastructure —
it will not run on n8n Cloud without a server accessible via SSH.

How to set up

1. Import the workflow into n8n
2. Edit the Gateway Config Set node with your URLs and paths
3. Set YOUTRACK_TOKEN and GITLAB_TOKEN as environment variables
   on your server (not in the workflow)
4. Create n8n credentials: SSH Private Key and HTTP Header Auth
   (Matrix bot token as Authorization: Bearer <token>)
5. Create the SQLite database on your server:

CREATE TABLE sessions (
  issue_id TEXT PRIMARY KEY, issue_title TEXT,
  session_id TEXT, started_at TEXT, last_active TEXT,
  message_count INTEGER DEFAULT 0, paused INTEGER DEFAULT 0,
  is_current INTEGER DEFAULT 0
);
CREATE TABLE queue (
  id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT,
  issue_id TEXT, message TEXT, queued_at TEXT
);
CREATE TABLE session_log (
  id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT,
  issue_id TEXT, issue_title TEXT, session_id TEXT,
  started_at TEXT, ended_at TEXT,
  message_count INTEGER, outcome TEXT
);

1. Activate the workflow

How to customize

• Add commands — add a case to the Command Router Switch node
• Change polling interval — edit the Schedule Trigger node
• Swap issue tracker — replace YouTrack API calls with Jira or Linear
• Swap chat platform — replace Matrix HTTP nodes with Slack or Discord
• Add pipeline detail — extend Handle Pipeline to fetch individual job logs