Checkpoint Loader

ComfyUI's own Load Checkpoint node does the one job it needs to: point it at a .safetensors file and it hands back the model, CLIP, and VAE your sampler chain needs. WAS Node Suite's version does the same load, but - per the author's own framing, this falls under "a set of ComfyUI loaders that also output a string that contains the name of the model being loaded" - it bolts on one more output: a text string carrying the checkpoint's filename.

Why that extra string matters

It sounds minor until you've tried to burn the checkpoint name into a saved filename or a caption overlay without it. The stock loader gives you nothing to hook a "which model made this" label to - you'd have to hardcode the name in a separate text node and hope it doesn't drift out of sync the next time you swap checkpoints from the dropdown. WAS's version keeps that in sync automatically, because the name comes straight from the same selection you loaded the model from. Feed it into a Text Concatenate, one of WAS's Text Tokens, or straight into a Save Image filename pattern, and every output is self-labeling.

That's the whole differentiator. Functionally it's a drop-in replacement for the core Load Checkpoint node - same model pieces, same behavior loading a checkpoint from ComfyUI/models/checkpoints/ - with one convenience output added on top.

Installing it

It's part of the full WAS Node Suite pack, ~200 nodes in one install rather than something you'd fetch on its own:

• ComfyUI Manager - search WAS Node Suite, install, restart.
• Manual - cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes && git clone https://github.com/WASasquatch/was-node-suite-comfyui/, then run pip install -r requirements.txt (or the portable build's python_embeded/python.exe -s -m pip install -r requirements.txt), then restart ComfyUI.

This node doesn't need any model download of its own - it reads whatever's already sitting in your standard checkpoints folder, same place the core loader looks.

Common issues

This is about as low-risk a node as the pack ships, since it's not doing anything the core loader doesn't already do successfully every day. The install-level issue is the one worth actually watching for: WAS Node Suite hasn't been under active development since December 2023, and the pack's own author has publicly acknowledged that ComfyUI updates can bump shared dependencies out from under WAS's older pinned versions, producing an "Import Failed" error on the whole pack rather than just this node. If that happens after an update, reinstalling requirements.txt fresh in your ComfyUI venv is the usual fix.

One thing to keep in mind if you're comparing checkpoints: this loader reports the file name, not the model's internal metadata - if you rename a checkpoint file on disk, that's the name you'll get back, regardless of what the model actually is. Keep your filenames meaningful and the extra output stays useful; keep them cryptic and you've just automated printing a cryptic string instead of a helpful one.