comfyui-renest

comfyui-renest

Nest a working run — save its files and dependencies, checked byte for byte.

Renest saves a ComfyUI or fine-tuning setup that already worked on a rented GPU — the model files, custom nodes, exact package versions and workflow — and brings it back on another Linux GPU machine, every file checked against its SHA-256. It promises that the files and dependencies come back verified; whether the app then runs is tested on every restore and reported, not promised.

This is the official Renest panel for ComfyUI. The moment a run succeeds, Nest this run saves everything that run depended on — models, custom nodes, dependency versions, the workflow itself — into a single open-format archive (a "nest") on this machine's disk, and checks every file byte for byte. Restore it later on another machine and those files and dependencies come back, checked again against the same fingerprints. Docs: https://renest.ai/docs/plugin-nest-this-run

What it looks like

• A Renest tab in the ComfyUI sidebar.
• After a successful run: Nest this run → a preview of exactly what will be saved (models / ComfyUI itself / custom nodes / dependency locks, with sizes), anything that could not be captured, and where the nest will be written → confirm → live progress until it is saved and verified.
• If the Renest engine isn't installed yet, the tab shows the two commands that install it. Nothing else to configure.

Install

Via ComfyUI-Manager: search for "Renest", install, restart ComfyUI.

Manually:

cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/renest-ai/comfyui-renest

Then install the Renest engine (any terminal, once per machine):

uv tool install --upgrade renest
# no uv yet?  curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh
#             or:  pip install uv   (a single binary, no dependencies —
#             safe to run inside this ComfyUI environment)
# or, if you know this environment is separate: pip install renest
renest serve

The engine is a separate program with its own licence (source-available: the code is public to read and audit, but it is not open source; its escape hatch and the nest format specs are Apache-2.0). It listens on 127.0.0.1:7799 and nothing else.

Where the nest is saved

Next to the environment it came from: <the folder holding your ComfyUI>/renest-nests/. The panel shows the exact path both before you commit to it and once the nest is done, so you can back it up, move it, or hand it to someone else. That folder sits on the same disk as your models, which on a rented pod is the volume that survives a restart — a home directory there often does not.

How it works, and what never happens

• The panel talks to the engine over loopback HTTP only (127.0.0.1:7799), authenticated with a token the engine writes on this machine. It never imports the engine's code: the process boundary is also the licence boundary.
• The token stays in memory. The panel's Python half reads the token file and hands the value to the browser code, which keeps it in a variable — never in localStorage, sessionStorage or a cookie.
• No cloud credentials pass through here. Bucket keys and account tokens are the engine's business; this panel never sees, stores or forwards them.
• Nothing is uploaded by this panel. A nest is written to your own disk. What you do with it afterwards is up to you.
• Nests carry no absolute paths from your machine. The archive records where things go relative to the environment, not where they came from — so handing a nest to someone else does not hand over your folder layout or your user name.

Requirements

• ComfyUI with the sidebar extension API (frontend 1.4x or newer).
• The renest Python package (>= 0.1.0) running renest serve on the same machine. Any regular Python 3.11+ can host it — it does not have to be the interpreter that runs ComfyUI. On the Windows portable build, install it with a normal Python rather than the embedded one, which ships without pip on PATH.

Licence

Copyright (C) 2026 Tensor Logic Digital, LLC.

GPL-3.0-or-later. This extension runs inside ComfyUI's process, so it follows ComfyUI's licence. The Renest engine it talks to is a separate program under its own source-available licence (shipped as the LICENSE-CLI file of the renest package); only the engine's escape hatch and the nest format specs are Apache-2.0.

The hosted Renest service at renest.ai is operated by the authors of this project.