Load Checkpoint (Arctenox's Essentials)

The standard Load Checkpoint gives you model, CLIP, and VAE - and nothing about which file it was. That's fine until you want metadata that actually names the model, or a hash Civitai can match. This loader is the same node plus two STRING outputs: model_name and model_hash, ready to wire into a save node that embeds them.

How it works

It loads the checkpoint exactly the way the core loader does - ckpt_name is the dropdown of your models folder - then returns the components alongside a computed hash. The hash is the first 10 characters of the file's SHA-256, uppercased, which is the AutoHash format Civitai uses to identify resources automatically. If you've ever wondered how a Civitai page "knows" which model produced an image, this is that number.

Sensible implementation detail: hashing a 6–7 GB file every run would be a crime against your load times, so the node caches results keyed on file path, modification time, and size. Re-run the same file and you get the cached hash instantly; touch the file and it recomputes.

The inputs and outputs that matter

Input: ckpt_name (dropdown). Outputs: model, clip, vae - exactly what you'd expect - plus model_name (STRING) and model_hash (STRING). The outputs are designed to plug straight into the pack's own Save Image With Metadata node, which accepts those fields for Civitai resource detection. That pairing is the real reason to use this loader over the core one: it turns "save the image" into "save the image with a model fingerprint attached."

Where the friction is

First load of a big checkpoint takes a moment - it has to read the whole file to hash it. That's unavoidable with a whole-file SHA-256, and it's a one-time cost per file version thanks to the cache. Also worth saying: model_name is just the dropdown label, so if you have multiple copies of the same model under different filenames, the name follows the filename. Rename your files consistently and your metadata will thank you.

If you don't care about Civitai metadata, you gain nothing here over the core loader - it's a metadata-first node, not a faster loader.

Install

Standard pack install via ComfyUI Manager (search Arctenoxs-Essentials_ComfyUI) or:

cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes/
git clone https://github.com/Arctenox/Arctenoxs-Essentials_ComfyUI

Restart after. No extra downloads - the hash is computed locally from your existing checkpoint. Baseline deps only (torch, numpy, optional psutil). The README flags the pack as deprecated while it's remastered; if metadata-with-hash is the only feature you want, that capability is common enough in other packs, but this implementation is compact and works today.