Prompt Sequence Filter

Every other node in the comfyui-prompt-sequence pack makes a prompt list. This one stands downstream and edits it. It's the pack's post-process stage: shuffle an existing sequence, cap it, or both - without touching the node that generated it.

The display name says it better than the class name does: Prompt Sequence Filter. You connect a source (the text list output of a Prompt Sequence Text, a Join, an image-sequence node - anything that emits a STRING list) and this node limits it, reorders it, or just passes it through. The honest description: it's the same engine as the plain Text node, repackaged to operate on a list that already exists instead of a box you type into.

How it works

The prompts box only does anything when source is not connected - wire in a source and the local box is hidden and ignored, exactly as its tooltip warns. That split is the whole personality of the node: unconnected, it's a mini Text node; connected, it's a filter. When the source is a list, the node takes its values in order, splits any multi-line strings it finds, then applies the mode.

The controls are the pack's usual trio plus one:

• mode - sequential keeps the source order, random shuffles before anything else happens.
• max_items - 0 outputs everything available; a positive value trims the list to that many.
• seed - random mode only. -1 (default) means a new order every queue; a fixed value repeats the same shuffle so you can debug a specific batch.

Shuffle-before-trim is the ordering to remember: it always shuffles first and then cuts, so with max_items = 3 and five source prompts you get a random three, not the first three shuffled. And like its sibling, random + seed = -1 marks the node always-changed (the float("NaN") IS_CHANGED idiom), so it genuinely re-rolls each run instead of serving a cached shuffle.

Output

One text output, a STRING list, ready for CLIP Text Encode. It's a transparent pass-through in sequential mode - the practical use is chaining it behind a Join or a card-library node to add "pick N at random" to a workflow that otherwise just emits everything.

Install

ComfyUI Manager, search comfyui-prompt-sequence, or:

cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/Localsmile/comfyui-prompt-sequence

Restart after either. No extra dependencies, no models.

Where it's a trap

The most common stumble is connecting a source and still seeing the prompt box - it's hidden while connected, and if you typed into it earlier that text is silently ignored. Don't fight it; that's the designed behavior. This is also a genuinely small pack (single commit, no community presence), so while this node is simple enough to trust, it's worth a throwaway run to confirm your downstream graph handles the capped list the way you expect.