v4 could not remove a built-in node from the pipeline and the reason was
structural: the wiring lived in code as a CORE dict nobody could reach, so
"remove this" had nothing to delete and "use a different one" had nothing to
change. Code is not a thing a user can edit.
The pipeline is now data. Three operations over it, each refusing with a
reason rather than half-doing the job:
build turns slots into the prompt ComfyUI queues, checking every link's type
and refusing a graph that cannot work. replace points a slot at any node
producing what its consumers read -- the built-in ones have no special
standing, which is what makes them replaceable rather than merely present.
remove takes a slot out and rewires what it fed to what fed it, when the
node has exactly one input matching each CONSUMED output; v4 required one
for every output a class could produce, so a spare FLOAT nobody wired made a
node unremovable.
Demonstrated against real schemas: FunPack's VAE loader swapped for core's
VAELoader, the modifiers node removed with the sampler rewired to read the
model directly, and removing the empty latent refused because nothing
upstream could feed what it fed.
Then run for real. The default pipeline, with three loader slots replaced by
one checkpoint slot, built from data, accepted by ComfyUI's own
validate_prompt, and executed by its own engine to execution_success and a
picture. Every wiring and type validated on the first attempt; the only
things ComfyUI objected to in the untouched default were the three unset
file pickers, which is correct -- a fresh install cannot know which model
you own.
Added a checkpoint loader, because the split loaders are right for LTX and
H3 and cannot read an SD-family single file at all.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Catching a modifier that fails to INSTALL was never the hard part. The one
that costs a rental is the hook that works at step 0 and raises at step 3,
after the GPU time is spent -- which the Detail modifier does on any video
latent, because core's sharpen kernel cannot take a 5-D tensor.
A module is now handed a patcher that guards every hook it installs, so it
does not opt in to being safe: a module that could forget to is a module
that can break the foundation. A hook that raises is dropped for the rest of
that run, reported once with its traceback, and sampling continues. Thirty
steps on the latent that used to end the run now complete untouched.
Recorded per RUN, not per process, so a long session reports every
generation that went inert instead of only the first after a restart.
Full control turns all of it off. A one-step schedule, a width the model
cannot use, a modifier that throws -- someone exploring the edges wants the
real behaviour and the real traceback, not a careful refusal. One switch
rather than one per guard, because a half-disabled safety net is harder to
reason about than either extreme. It is asked for by capability, so nothing
names the module that answers, and a build without it installed has nobody
saying yes -- which reads as guarded.
Honest about its own limit: a hook shape with no known neutral result is
installed unguarded and named in the status, rather than counted as safe.
Two test faults fixed while writing this. The assertions compared conds_out
against the list passed in -- the same object the hook mutates -- so they
were true whatever the hook did. And the registry fakes were hand-rolled and
missing methods the real one has, which passed until the code called one.
They use the real Registry now.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
One declaration does three jobs: renders the panel, carries the defaults, names
the values that come back. A module writes no DOM and reads no DOM.
Validation refuses rather than repairs -- unknown type, a renderer its type does
not have, a label that is not text, a default outside its own bounds, a when
naming a key the module never declared. A module that is wrong does not get a
best-effort panel; it does not load, and says why once.
Ordering is by declared relation and stage, never priority numbers, and a cycle
drops only the modules in it. Compatibility is by trait, never model name.
The shell hands a module { composer, values, on, shell } and nothing else: no
node, no document, no kit internals. It cannot style anything because it is
never given anything that could.
catalogue/hide.html puts one good module and five broken ones through the real
shell and shows the result: one panel, five absent, no placeholders. The lint
fixtures make the scanner prove it catches each rule, so a clean scan means
something.
First slice: modules/system/appearance. Two settings, an optional ui.js, and
clicking Light actually turns the app light.
