OCR Is Not Document Automation Most broken n8n document workflows start with a reasonable assumption: "We need to automate documents, so we need OCR." That assumption gets the first demo working. An email arrives with a PDF attachment. An OCR node extracts text. A language model turns the text into JSON. A Google Sheets node writes a row. The workflow looks clean on the canvas, and the first invoice passes through without drama. Then real documents arrive. One supplier sends a scanned invoice. Another sends a five-page PDF with line items split across pages. One receipt has a missing VAT number. One contract needs review before anyone trusts the dates. The finance team wants a weekly spreadsheet. The operations team wants a PDF summary. Someone asks why the workflow accepted a total with low confidence and sent it downstream automatically. The problem is not that OCR failed. The problem is that OCR was treated as the workflow. Document automation is the full path from intake to decision to output.…