Models and pipeline, Updates, Node packs, the log, and Temp files were
five separate dropdown entries with no way to search across them. One
button now opens a single searchable window; About is drawn in place,
everything else is a deep link -- each of those five already has real,
tested modal chrome of its own, so this reuses it rather than rebuilding
it inline.
Uses the existing composer.splitPane.h for the two-pane layout rather
than a new element -- an earlier pass added one, and its CSS collided
with splitPane's own .cx-split class, silently breaking the pipeline
window's own list/parameters split (caught by pipeline.spec.js before
this landed).
The Edit menu gains Toggle Exclude, next to Add/Delete scene. An excluded
scene stays on the timeline, dimmed in the strip, and Generate All skips it
-- both in its count and its loop, so "2 of 2 did not generate" never counts
a scene that was never going to run.
Covered by a jsdom render test, a real end-to-end menu-to-strip test, and a
Generate All exclude test.
Player: Save to bin (whatever the viewer shows, if it has a real file
identity) and Save frame (canvas-capture the video on screen, upload
through ComfyUI's own /upload/image, no new route needed). Both add
without navigating the viewer -- an upload is a real round trip, and
the result is added to the bin, not shown as a stale finished pick.
Save/Load Project File: a real download route with Content-Disposition,
and an import route that never trusts an id in the file -- an import
always lands as its own project, never overwrites one already here.
Generate All: every scene in order, waiting for each to finish before
starting the next -- not a montage (v5 has no render/stitch stage),
N separate generations each landing on its own scene.
Both project-switching (open/newProject/importProject) and the earlier
run-reattach path shared a bug class this session kept finding: state
captured at one moment, applied at a later async moment with no check
that nothing had moved on in between. Closed it properly this time --
a generation counter every switch bumps and checks, including start()
(the page's own handlers are live before it resolves) and undo/redo
(also "a different project is open now"), and scheduleSave() captures
the object an edit actually touched instead of re-reading a variable
that can point somewhere else by the time its debounce timer fires.
Four adversarial rounds against this range, each fixed before landing.
Fifth off the port list. ComfyUI writes previews and other transient outputs to
a temp directory and wipes it on restart, so everything in there is findable
for exactly as long as the server has been up -- which is the window in which
anyone asks where something went.
Read-only on purpose. This is a place to FIND a file, not to manage one;
deleting temp files is ComfyUI's job and it does it on restart.
Rows rather than tiles, which is the opposite of the bin and for the opposite
reason: a row shows the whole name, the size and when it was written, and the
grid draws none of those. Only media is listed -- a temp directory fills with
whatever any node felt like writing, and a browser listing 400 .pt files is not
a media bin. No <video> thumbnails, which wedged this app's API once already.
Three empty states, because they are three different facts: nothing was written
yet, the directory was wiped, and ComfyUI is not here to ask. An empty list
reads as the first one whichever is true.
One test taught me something about this environment again: opening a file puts
it in the Preview, the dev server has no /view, so the picture 404s and the kit
replaces it with its fallback -- correctly, and leaving nothing in the DOM to
assert on. What the viewer FETCHES is the evidence, so the test reads the
request rather than the picture.
Fourth off the port list. Users do not open devtools, and "it did not work"
with nothing to read is where a bug report dies -- especially on a rented box
behind a tunnel, where the terminal that has the answer is not on this desk.
Read from ComfyUI's own log FILE rather than from a buffer in this process.
v4 kept both and its own comment says why the file is the half that matters: a
crash and restart empties an in-memory buffer, and the lines from before the
crash are exactly the ones worth reading. So this is the smaller half and the
more useful one.
Three things the panel refuses to do, each because of what a log is FOR:
* It does not redraw while text is being selected. Copying a stack trace is the
one thing anybody opens a log to do, and a panel that repaints under the drag
makes it impossible.
* It keeps the last lines when the server stops answering. The most interesting
thing a log can say is that ComfyUI just died, and replacing the lines from
just before it went with the error that says it is gone throws away the only
evidence of why.
* No log file is an ANSWER, with the reason and where to look instead. An empty
list reads as a quiet log, and the difference matters precisely when somebody
opened the panel because something else already broke.
Third off the port list. Users will want to add the one pack a workflow needs
without being sent to another UI to do it, and a pack that ships experimental
work needs the same for itself.
custom_nodes.py comes across as core/nodes_manager.py, changed in two places:
where FunPack's root is, and one guard that the port made necessary.
THE GUARD. custom_nodes_root() asks ComfyUI first and falls back to "FunPack
lives inside custom_nodes" -- a reliable anchor in an install, and a wrong one
in a development checkout, where the parent is somebody's home directory. Every
rule protecting the delete measures against that answer, so with ComfyUI's
paths unavailable, "remove Foo" resolved against ~/Documents and all four
guards happily agreed. It now checks the assumption it is named after and
refuses with where it thinks it is. Found by running the function, not by
reading it.
Two faults of my own, both in the window:
* Update and Remove were a button GROUP -- radios -- for two actions that are
not a choice between two states. It also left Remove looking selected after a
click, which is an alarming thing to look at.
* A failure was drawn and then wiped by the redraw in the same finally block:
the message appeared and vanished in one frame. What went wrong is state now,
not an argument to one draw call.
Second off the port list, and the one that gets reached for most: a pack whose
value is experimental work shipped continuously lives on switch-branch and
update.
git_update.py comes across from v4 as core/update.py, changed in three places
and no more: where the repo root is, a `remote=False` mode, and a 20-second
timeout on the one call that touches the network. It has been switching
branches on real rentals for months and every refusal in it -- no git on PATH,
not a checkout, a dirty tree, a branch that exists on neither side -- is a
lesson that cost somebody an afternoon. Rewriting it to look more like v5 would
trade proven plumbing for a fresh set of edge cases.
It is core rather than a module because it is about the INSTALL: no module can
announce the thing that updates every module.
Four routes, and every one of them ends by relaunching ComfyUI -- so the answer
is written first and the restart is a callback scheduled after it. `restart` is
looked up on the module rather than captured, or running the suite would
relaunch the test runner.
The window reads the checkout TWICE: once without the network, so there is
something to see instantly, then again with it for ahead and behind. A fetch
takes seconds on a good day and blocks until it times out on a machine that
cannot reach the remote, and neither is a reason to show an empty box. A dirty
tree is said before either button is pressed rather than as a refusal after.
Then it waits: an overlay that polls /api/health until the server answers, and
says so when it does not come back rather than spinning forever. That last part
needed the kit's blocking overlay to be able to change its message -- it could
not, so my give-up branch would have failed silently, which is the exact
pattern this project keeps finding.
First off the port list. Every edit in v5 was final -- v4 has had undo since
store.js, which is why it never showed up in a file-by-file inventory: there
is no undo.js to find.
A project is plain JSON and a few kilobytes, so undo is a snapshot before each
edit rather than an inverse per action. Capped at 40. The SELECTION travels
with the snapshot: undoing a removal and landing on a different scene than the
one that came back is not what anyone means by "take that back".
Two things it deliberately does not do. A new edit ends the redo line, or a
redo walks into a version that never followed from what is on screen. And a
project just opened has no past -- otherwise undo reaches back across a
project switch and replaces the open project with a version of a different one.
Edit menu: undo, redo, add and delete scene, move clip either way. Built on
each press so Undo is offered only when there is something behind it; a menu
that always offers it teaches people it does nothing. ⌘Z and ⇧⌘Z do the same,
except inside a text box, where the browser's own undo is the right one --
taking it over means one keystroke un-typing a paragraph instead of a word.
View gains Reset layout, for the person who closed both panels and cannot
remember what brings them back.
Steps, Sampler and Scheduler are on the main window -- the three v4 buried
several clicks deep in Engine Settings. No new UI: the sampler slot declares
roles the way the prompt and the size already do.
What made that nearly free is that the controls now come from the NODE's own
description, through the settingFor/rendererFor pair the pipeline window has
always used. So a combo is a dropdown of the real choices and a number obeys
the real bounds, and prompt.js lost both of its hand-rolled branches: it no
longer decides what a control looks like, it asks.
File: New project, and every project listed with the open one ticked. The
store has been able to do this since the day it arrived and there was no way
in -- 20 lines of menu.
Three faults found on the way, all in the shared input helper:
* ENTER COULD NOT BE TYPED IN A TEXTAREA. `wire()` bound Enter to commit for
every text control, textareas included, so a multi-line value was
impossible -- the prompt above all, which is the longest multi-line thing
in the app. It has been that way in the pipeline window since it was
written; nobody had typed a second line into one.
* A control committed on blur alone, so autofill, a password manager and any
script setting a value went unheard. It listens to `change` as well now,
and commit() only acts on a real difference so the pair costs nothing.
* A control commits on blur, which means text still being typed is not in
the project yet -- and a tab closing is exactly when that is lost. boot
blurs before it saves.
v4's arrangement, which is the one that reads as an editor: a zone head
holds what acts on THAT zone, so the app grows a bar of its own for what
acts on the app.
* The menu bar. Brand, View and Settings, and whether ComfyUI is still on
the other end. Only menus with something real in them exist -- an empty
File menu is a promise the app does not keep.
* The prompt is written in the CONSTRUCTOR, a window. v4 called this the
Composer; that name is taken here by the element kit, and two things
called Composer in one repo is one thing nobody can search for. It is
the longest thing a person writes and the least often read, and a
permanent third of the centre column is the room the timeline needs.
The host is built at startup and outlives every opening, so a window
that opens twice does not throw away what was typed.
* The timeline replaces it, and Generate moves into its head with what
the run is doing at the far end of the same head. No bar across the
bottom: one that spans the window belongs to no region.
Four faults found on the way, three of them mine and one much older:
* THE OVERLAY ROOT WAS A STACKING CONTEXT. It documents at length that it
must never be one -- and then set `position: fixed`, which makes one on
its own. So the whole z ladder was measured inside that single element:
an open menu at z 500 painted UNDER a button at z 1. Every overlay in
the app was one positive z-index away from being buried, and the only
reason nobody had seen it is that almost nothing claims a z-index. The
root is static and zero-sized now; every layer in it is fixed already.
* Generate's hover ran `filter: brightness()`, which lightens the LABEL
along with the fill under it -- the one thing that had to stay readable
lost contrast in both themes. Only the fill moves now, and which way it
moves depends on the theme: dark's accent carries near-black text so it
goes lighter, light's carries white so it goes darker. Measured: no
gradient stop under 4.1:1, hovered or at rest.
* A fixed-height head could not shrink below the width of everything in
it, and a head now holds a title, three controls and a status. That
min-content became the centre column's, so a 768px window laid out
878px wide and scrolled sideways. It wraps now, as v4's does.
* A CSS patch of mine silently did nothing because its anchor text had
moved and I had left the assertion off that one replacement. Every
patch asserts now.
digital-garbage