AlignYourStepsScheduler_motorway_edition

Align Your Steps (AYS) is the scheduler that made "just run it at 10–15 steps" a reasonable sentence again. Instead of a generic noise schedule, it ships with sigma schedules tuned per model family - SD1, SDXL, SVD - so the denoising effort lands where each architecture actually wants it. This is the Motorway-ed clone of ComfyUI's AlignYourStepsScheduler, and it's one of the nicer ones in the family because the original node is all widgets: no connection inputs at all. In Motorway form, that means nothing to key-ify on the input side. You set three controls, and sigmas get written into the Motorway under the key you choose.

How it works

The scheduler computes a sigma schedule - the list of noise levels the sampler will walk down - and drops it into the Motorway. Your sampler node later pulls it back out by key name and uses it to drive its steps. The inputs that matter:

• model_type - the AYS preset: SD1, SDXL, or SVD. Pick the one that matches your checkpoint's architecture. There's no auto-detect; get this wrong and the schedule is just wrong-shaped for your model.
• steps - default 10, and that's the whole point of AYS. These schedules are designed for short runs.
• denoise - default 1.0. Drop it below 1 to leave some noise in (img2img-style) or when a later stage will finish the job.
• OUTPUT_SIGMAS_key - the key to store the sigmas under, default SIGMAS.

That last one is the important field for Motorway people: whatever key you set here is what your sampler must read. If upstream nodes already used SIGMAS for something else, change this key so you don't overwrite it (keys overwrite in this system - reuse one and the old value is gone).

The "optional" Motorway trap

Notice the schema lists MOTORWAY 🚌💨 as optional. Don't trust that. The generator made it optional only because the original node has no connection inputs, so there was nothing to convert into key fields. Look at the wrapper code and the node still calls MOTORWAY.update() and MOTORWAY.clone() - give it no Motorway and it dies with an AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'update'. Always feed it a live Motorway (from a MotorwayStart), even though the UI will let you leave it unplugged.

When you'd use it

Any time you're building custom sampling in Motorway form and you're on SD1.5, SDXL, or SVD, this is a strong default - a genuinely researched one, not a vibes-based pick. If your model is flow-matching (Flux, Z-Image, the newer crowd), AYS won't be in the preset list and you want BasicScheduler with beta or simple instead; per the community consensus, Karras and friends actively hurt on those straighter trajectories.

Install and gotchas

cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/agilly1989/ComfyUI_agilly1989_motorway

Restart, or search "ComfyUI_agilly1989_motorway" in ComfyUI Manager. No extra dependencies or model files.

Two things worth knowing before you build anything important on this pack. First, it's an active-development beta - the README literally opens "BIG BROKEN WITH ASYNC WILL FIX WHEN I GET THE TIME/MOTIVATION." Second, the current hotfix release has the _motorway_edition clone generation commented out of __init__.py, so on the newest main these nodes may not load at all. If you have an old workflow using them and ComfyUI says they're missing, that's the reason, and it's the author's own flag - open an issue rather than trying to DM him.