🌐 Remote CLIP for ComfyUI

Run CLIP text encoding on a different machine and use it seamlessly inside ComfyUI 🚀 Perfect for offloading heavy CLIP models to another PC or server.

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✨ What is this?

This project adds two custom ComfyUI nodes that let you:

• 🖥️ Run a CLIP Worker on one machine
• 🎛️ Connect to it from another machine using a CLIP Loader
• 🔗 Send text prompts over the network
• 📦 Receive CLIP embeddings (cond + pooled) back in real time

Both machines run ComfyUI, but only one needs the CLIP model loaded.

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🧠 How it works (simple view)

[ ComfyUI (Client) ]  --->  text prompt  --->  [ ComfyUI (Worker) ]
[ Remote CLIP Loader ] <--- embeddings  <---  [ Remote CLIP Worker ]

• Uses TCP sockets
• Sends metadata as JSON
• Sends tensors as binary blobs
• Automatically handles tensor shapes & dtypes

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🧩 Nodes Included

🔹 Remote CLIP Worker

🖥️ Runs on the machine that has the CLIP model

• Listens on a TCP port
• Receives text prompts
• Runs CLIP encoding
• Sends embeddings back to clients

Inputs

• clip → Any CLIP model
• listen_port → Port to listen on (default: 8002)

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🔹 Remote CLIP Loader

🎛️ Runs on the client machine

• Connects to the worker
• Acts like a normal CLIP object in ComfyUI
• Transparently forwards encoding requests

Inputs

• worker_ip → IP address of the worker machine
• port → Worker port (default: 8002)

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⚙️ Setup Instructions

1️⃣ Install on both machines

Clone this repository into your ComfyUI custom_nodes directory:

cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/nyueki/ComfyUI-RemoteCLIPLoader.git

Restart ComfyUI on both machines.

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2️⃣ Start the Worker (Machine A)

1. Add Remote CLIP Worker node
2. Connect a CLIP model
3. Choose a port (e.g. 8002)
4. Queue the workflow

✅ The worker is now listening for connections

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3️⃣ Connect from Client (Machine B)

1. Add Remote CLIP Loader node
2. Enter the worker’s IP address
3. Match the port number
4. Use it anywhere a CLIP node is expected 🎉

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📦 What gets transmitted?

• 📝 Prompt text

• 🔢 Tokenization options

• 🧠 CLIP embeddings:

  • cond → (1, 77, 768)
  • pooled → (1, 768)

All tensors are:

• Converted to CPU
• Sent as raw bytes
• Reconstructed safely on the client

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🛡️ Notes & Tips

• 🔌 Make sure the port is open on the worker machine
• 🏠 Best used on local networks (LAN)
• ⚠️ No encryption — don’t expose to the public internet
• 🧪 Designed for simplicity & reliability

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🧰 Category in ComfyUI

Remote CLIP

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❤️ Why use this?

• Save VRAM on your main machine
• Share one powerful CLIP server
• Experiment with distributed ComfyUI setups
• Clean, minimal, no external dependencies