Deprecated · Sampling Trace Note

Sampling Trace Note lets you attach a note to a trace run - not floating on the canvas, but stored inside the run's evidence where the report generation can see it. You write "hands started collapsing at step 4, tried CFG 6 → 4.5," and that observation ships with the run's data and its Markdown/HTML reports. It's deprecated in the current 0.4.0 release because the bottom panel now owns note management, but the node still loads from old saved workflows.

What it does

It's a thin wrapper over the run's probe stream. You feed it a trace_session, it appends a note entry, and it hands the same trace_session back out so you can keep wiring down the line. The note is stored with a type - and that type is the interesting part:

• observation - something you saw (default)
• hypothesis - what you think is causing it
• decision - what you changed because of it
• issue - the thing that's broken

That observation/hypothesis/decision taxonomy is a nice little scientific-method scaffold for people who actually debug instead of randomizing the seed until it works. The note text is a multiline string (capped at 8000 characters in the stored payload). Updating a note also refreshes report.md and report.html, per the README.

Inputs and outputs

• trace_session (required, TRACE_SESSION) - the run you're annotating.
• note (required, multiline STRING) - the text itself.
• category (required, enum) - observation / hypothesis / decision / issue.
• Output: trace_session, passed through unchanged.

Install

The usual one-line for this pack:

git clone https://github.com/ILcrowe/ComfyUI-SamplingTrace-Inspector.git ComfyUI/custom_nodes/ComfyUI-SamplingTrace-Inspector

or ComfyUI Manager → "Sampling Trace", restart, done. No dependencies beyond ComfyUI's own environment.

Where people get burned

• It's hidden from search in 0.4.0. Deprecated by design - the note node is kept for saved-workflow compatibility, and the bottom panel is where notes live now.
• Notes go to the run, not the graph. A note here is evidence attached to a specific run's data. If you want a comment that just sits on the canvas, this isn't it - the pack's designers deliberately moved notes out of the wiring surface.
• Expect notes to persist with the run. They're stored under ComfyUI/user/trace_inspector/runs/<run_id>/ and can end up in shared reports, so keep the text something you'd be fine with a colleague (or the internet) reading.

If you're maintaining an old graph, this node still works exactly as written. For new work, skip it - the panel's Notes section does the same thing with less ceremony.