Google has entered the AI automation arena with its new product, Opal. Designed to help users create powerful AI-driven flows, Opal is currently in an experimental phase but shows significant promise for quick content generation and internal tooling. Let's dive into what Opal offers, its current capabilities, and whether it's ready for production use.

Did Opal Kill n8n? Not Yet!

Getting Started with Google Opal

To explore Opal, head over to opal.withgoogle.com. Once you navigate past any initial pages, you'll land in a gallery of pre-built "Opal flows" or "automations." These include interesting examples like a "Business Profiler," which can conduct research based on a URL in just a few steps.

You can "remix" existing flows to make a copy and edit them. While the platform is still experimental, its core concept is straightforward.

The Core Components of an Opal Flow

Opal workflows are built using three primary control types:

  • User Input (Yellow): This is where you define what information the user needs to provide to start the flow.
  • Generate (Blue): These nodes are where the heavy lifting happens. You can select from various Large Language Models (LLMs) and craft prompts to instruct the AI. Opal even suggests prompts to get you started.
  • Output (Green): This is the final step, presenting the results of your flow.

Beyond these, you can add "assets," though they are currently minimal, including options for YouTube and file uploads. The simplicity of these controls makes it easy to quickly construct a flow.

Is Opal an Automation Killer? Not Yet.

A natural question arises: does Opal replace established automation platforms like N8N, Make.com, or Zapier? At this stage, the answer is no. Opal's primary limitation is its lack of robust integrations with external data sources and third-party applications. While Google will likely expand its capabilities, it's not yet positioned as a comprehensive automation killer for complex, integrated workflows.

However, for internal tools, quick content generation, or testing AI prompts, Opal is "top-notch."

Building an Advanced Content Generation Flow

To demonstrate Opal's power, let's look at creating a sophisticated content generation flow. Imagine wanting to generate a full SEO-optimized blog post, complete with keywords, image prompts, and social media posts, all from a simple description. Here's a prompt that was used to create such a flow:

"I would like to create a flow that allows me to enter a description of the overall information that I want. Then it creates the keywords including LSI and keywords of intent and includes longtail keywords as well. Then researches the topic thoroughly, creates an outline and then according to best practice from Bing and Google in order to be optimized for indexing generates a SEO blog post and then at the end or at the same time it creates the list of keywords for me and includes two image prompts that are related to the content and go ahead and generate LinkedIn Facebook X and Instagram posts as well."

After processing this prompt, Opal quickly constructs a multi-step workflow. This flow connects various "Generate" nodes:

  • Topic Description (User Input)
  • Generate Keywords (Expert in SEO and keyword research)
  • Conduct Deep Research
  • Create Outline
  • Generate SEO Blog Post
  • Generate Image Prompts
  • Generate Social Media Posts (LinkedIn, Facebook, X, Instagram)
  • Return Output

Notice how the flow intelligently splits to generate content, image prompts, and social media posts in parallel before consolidating the output.

Google Opal automation tool pros vs cons infographic with checkmarks for benefits and X marks for limitations in a clean visual layout

Running the Flow and Analyzing the Results

Let's test this flow with an input like: "2025 end of year new and exciting updates from Go High Level concerning new features."

While the initial setup of the flow took about a minute and a half, the "conduct deep research" step took approximately 10 minutes, leading to an overall elapsed time of about 18 minutes for the entire generation process.

The results are impressive:

  • Blog Post: A considerable, well-structured blog post, titled "Go High Level 2025 End of Year: Unpacking the Latest and Exciting Updates." It accurately identified key features like advanced AI, AI-driven tools, workflow assistants, chatbots, and a next-generation funnel builder.
  • SEO Keywords: An extensive list of keywords, including LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing), keywords of intent, longtail keywords, navigational, and transactional terms. This is a robust list for any content creator.
  • Image Prompts: Two relevant and descriptive image prompts, such as "Diverse professional user interacting with an AI-powered interface..."
  • Social Media Posts: Well-crafted prompts for LinkedIn, Facebook, X (Twitter), and Instagram, ready to be published.

The ability to generate such high-quality, comprehensive content from a simple description in a relatively short amount of time makes Opal a powerful tool for content creators, marketers, and business owners looking to quickly prototype or produce materials.

Conclusion: Opal's Place in Your Workflow

Google Opal, despite being in its experimental phase and lacking extensive external integrations, is an incredibly useful tool for specific applications. It excels at:

  • Rapid Prototyping: Quickly testing AI prompts and content generation ideas.
  • Internal Tooling: Creating simple, effective tools for tasks that don't require external data sources.
  • Content Generation: Producing comprehensive blog posts, SEO keywords, image prompts, and social media content from a single input.

For quick, focused AI automation without the complexity of external system integrations, Opal is definitely worth exploring. It allows you to build and test automations in minutes, freeing up valuable time.

If you're interested in leveraging AI and automation to scale your small business or solo venture, and specifically want to learn more about platforms like Go High Level, we invite you to join our community of doers. We focus on empowering you to use these tools effectively so you can free up your life and achieve more without hiring more people or outsourcing.

Learn more and get started today: https://learn.aiautomationelite.com