Burn Notice

A "burn notice" in spy fiction is the instruction to disavow someone. This node is the ComfyUI version: you type text into it, it hands the text to whatever you've wired downstream, and then it erases itself from the node's UI. Read once, gone. The name isn't flavor text - it's the feature.

Here's the thing that makes it interesting: whatever you put in that box is part of your saved workflow, and saved workflows travel - into PNG metadata, into shared files, into screenshots. If you've got a one-shot API token, a temporary path, or any ad-hoc string you want consumed exactly once and then removed from the graph state, Burn Notice is the "don't let this linger" answer.

How it works

• value (STRING, multiline) - your text. On execution the node returns exactly that string as its value output. After the run, the frontend clears the field so it doesn't persist into the next run or next save.
• mute_after (BOOLEAN, default false) - flip it on and after the run the node mutes itself (ComfyUI's "muted" state), so it won't execute again until you unmute it from the node's context menu. Handy if you want a one-shot gate that stops firing.

The backend is deliberately dumb - it just passes the string through - and all the "erase after read" behavior lives in the frontend extension. So this node's magic is really in the UI, and it needs the pack's frontend files (installed automatically) to do its thing.

When to use it

• A token or key you need in one run and don't want baked into the saved workflow.
• A temporary parameter you're experimenting with and would otherwise forget to clear.
• A value you want consumed and gone before the graph is re-saved or shared.

The honest counterpoint: this is a niche tool. For most text, a plain text node is what you want - Burn Notice is specifically for the "use it once, then it should stop existing" case, and its value is mostly hygiene. If you're worried about secrets in shared workflows, the better habit is reading them from environment variables, which this pack's GetEnvVar does - Burn Notice is the "I'll type it once and let it die" convenience layer on top.

Installing it

Part of comfy-ovum:

cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/sfinktah/comfy-ovum

Restart, or ComfyUI Manager → "comfy-ovum". No models, no heavy deps.

Gotchas

The erasure is a frontend effect - the string has already been sent to the backend and whatever consumed it has it, so "gone" means "gone from the UI," not "gone from the universe." And mute_after only makes sense with the frontend present; if you run ComfyUI with a client that doesn't load the pack's JS, the mute behavior silently won't happen. If the value never seems to clear, check that the pack's web files are loading (they install with the pack by default).