Right now, your n8n workflow can fail completely — and still say "Success."

The exact clicks

1. Log into n8n (n8n.cloud free tier, or a self-hosted instance — this behaves the same on both) and create a new, empty workflow so nothing real is affected.
2. Add a Manual Trigger node (the default starting node on a blank workflow), then add an HTTP Request node connected after it.
3. In the HTTP Request node, set the URL to something guaranteed to fail — a domain that doesn't resolve, or any URL ending in a path you know returns a 404.
4. Open that same node's Settings tab and find the "On Error" field. Change it from "Stop Workflow" (the default) to "Continue".
5. Run the workflow (the "Execute Workflow" button). Open the Executions list on the left — it reads Success, in green, even though the request actually failed.
6. Click into that one node's output panel — the real error (fields like error and statusCode) is sitting there in the JSON. That is the only place it's visible; nothing on the Executions list itself flags it.
7. The actual fix: add an IF node right after the HTTP Request node, checking whether its output contains an error field. Wire the "true" branch to a Slack or email node so a real failure sends you an alert instead of vanishing into a green checkmark.

What changes

• n8n's "On Error: Continue" setting is designed to survive a minor hiccup and keep the rest of the workflow running — that part is a real, useful feature, not a bug.
• The gap is what happens next: a node set to Continue that actually fails does not change the workflow's own Success/Error status at all — the Executions list has no visual difference between "ran perfectly" and "this step silently failed."
• This matches a dated, first-person report from n8n's own community forum (May 2026, independently confirmed by a second user in July 2026): a real production workflow stayed silently broken for weeks because the Executions list never stopped reading Success.

What it will not do

• This is about the "On Error: Continue" and "Continue (using error output)" settings specifically — a node left on the default "Stop Workflow" behaves as expected and does flag the workflow as failed.
• The fix shown (an IF node checking for an error field) has to be added to every node you've set to Continue — it isn't a global setting that protects a whole workflow at once.
• Verified against n8n's current official docs and community reports as of this episode, not personally re-tested against every n8n version — if n8n changes this behavior in a future release, re-check before relying on this exact setup.