ComfyUI-Universal-Timer

🎛️ ComfyUI Universal Timer

Version: v0.1.0

A professional, industrial-grade monitoring and execution timer node for ComfyUI. Designed with dynamic unit mapping, real-time status reporting, and robust workflow categorization, Universal Timer provides a unified time-tracking and performance analysis framework for any type of ComfyUI generation pipeline.

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📌 Where to Find It in ComfyUI

After installation, you can find this node by right-clicking on the canvas, navigating to utils (or using the search bar and typing Universal Timer).

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✨ Features

• 🏭 Mechanical-Style Industrial UI: Sleek, retro-digital LED appearance featuring all-caps status indicators ([ READY ], [ PAUSE ], [ ERROR ]) for a geek-friendly, clean aesthetic.
• 🔄 Dynamic Unit Mapping: Automatically adapts measurement units and counter labels based on your selected workflow type:
  • Image ➔ IMAGES
  • Video ➔ FRAMES
  • Audio ➔ CLIPS
  • Prompt ➔ STEPS
  • Training ➔ EPOCHS
  • Custom ➔ ITEMS
• 🎨 Theme Persistence: Click-to-change color palette (White, Blue, Green, Yellow, Pink). Your visual preferences automatically persist inside the Workflow JSON.
• 📊 Live Progress & State Tracking: Monitors real-time progress ([ Current / Total ]) alongside precise lifecycle management.
• ⏸️ Interactive Pause & Resume: Hover over the lower counter region to toggle [ PAUSE ] / [ RESUME ] to exclude away-time from performance metrics.
• 🛡️ Robust Error Handling: Automatically switches to an alert-red [ ERROR ] state when upstream execution failures or workflow exceptions occur.

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<p align="center"> <img src="assets/uni_timer.gif" alt="Universal Timer Interaction Demo"><br> _{*Industrial aesthetic with dynamic unit mapping, live status monitoring, and interactive controls.*} </p>

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📦 Installation

Note: This node relies strictly on native web standard components and ComfyUI API events. No external Python dependencies or requirements.txt are required.

Method 1: Via ComfyUI-Manager (Recommended)

1. Open ComfyUI and click on Manager in the menu.
2. Select Custom Nodes Manager.
3. Search for ComfyUI-Universal-Timer.
4. Click Install and restart your ComfyUI.

Method 2: Manual Installation (Git Clone)

1. Navigate to your ComfyUI custom_nodes directory:

   cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
   

2. Clone this repository:

   git clone https://github.com/hermankwan/ComfyUI-Universal-Timer
   

3. Restart your ComfyUI instance.

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🎯 Conceptual Framework & Design Principles

To maintain absolute clarity and maintainability across complex pipelines, Universal Timer enforces strict architectural boundaries regarding workflow typing and batch execution.

1. The workflow_type Definition Rule (Output Asset Type Principle)

The classification of a workflow is governed strictly by its Final Output Asset Type, regardless of the intermediate processing steps, auxiliary models, control networks, or prompt enhancements involved:

• Image: Any pipeline whose terminal output is an image format (covers standard Text-to-Image, Image-to-Image, Upscaling pipelines, etc.).
• Video: Pipelines whose terminal delivery consists of video sequences or animation files.
• Audio: Pipelines terminating in sound or music synthesis.
• Prompt: Workflows dedicated to LLM-driven text prompt engineering, optimization, or structured generation.
• Training: Workflows focused on model fine-tuning, embedding, or LoRA generation (EPOCHS).
• Custom: Any alternative or experimental output type falling outside the standard categories (ITEMS).

2. Total Count Principles: Tensor Batching vs. Sequential Loops

Universal Timer distinguishes between ComfyUI’s native tensor processing and iterative loop execution:

• Native Tensor Batching (batch_size = N in KSampler / Latent):
  • Behavior: Processed in parallel during a single prompt execution cycle.
  • Setting Rule: Keep total = 1. The timer records the monolithic execution duration of the tensor bundle as 1 unit.
• Sequential / Iterative Batching (e.g., Loop nodes, Batch Loaders):
  • Behavior: Processed iteratively across multiple execution rounds.
  • Setting Rule: Set total = N to track accurate real-time loop progress ([ Current / Total ]).

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🚀 How to Use & Interactive Controls

1. Add Universal Timer to your ComfyUI workspace graph.
2. Select your pipeline category under workflow_type (the node instantly maps the corresponding unit label).
3. Connect your item count to total if running sequential loops, then click Queue Prompt.

🖱️ Canvas Interactions

• Pause / Resume: Hover over the bottom counter area while running. Click [ PAUSE ] to freeze the elapsed timer, and [ RESUME ] to resume.
• Manual Reset: Click directly on the 7-segment LED time display digits at any time to reset the clock to 00:00:00.
• Theme Swatches: Click any color indicator swatch to change the LED glow color instantly.

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📋 Changelog

v0.1.0

• Initial release of Universal Timer.
• Introduced dynamic unit mapping across 6 core output categories (Image, Video, Audio, Prompt, Training, Custom).
• Added industrial ALL-CAPS status state machines ([ READY ], [ CANCEL ], [ PAUSE ], [ RESUME ], [ ERROR ]).
• Implemented workflow-scoped theme color persistence and hover-to-pause controls.

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📜 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.