Dashscope VLM Loader

The name is a lie. The Dashscope VLM Loader doesn't load a model into VRAM, doesn't download weights, doesn't even call an API, and needs no API key. All it does is output the model ID you pick from a dropdown as a plain string. It's the VLM half of the selector pair that makes the ComfyUI-Dashscope pack work without you memorizing Alibaba's model version strings.

When you're building a workflow around the pack, the node that actually talks to the cloud - DashscopeModelCaller - needs a model_version string. You could type qwen-vl-max-2024-12-30 by hand every time. Or you could drop this in and pick it from a menu. That's the whole job.

How it works

Under the hood it reads a static list from model_versions/vlm.txt in the pack folder, exposes it as an enum dropdown, and returns whatever you selected. The heavy lifting is entirely on Alibaba's side, so there's no local computation, no GPU usage, and no billing for using the loader itself - it's just a curated picklist.

The dropdown covers the two Qwen vision lines:

• qwen-vl-max (the default) - the flagship vision-language model. Stable alias qwen-vl-max, or snapshot IDs like qwen-vl-max-2024-12-30 / -1119 / -1030 / -0809 / -0201.
• qwen-vl-plus - cheaper and faster, tuned hard for detail and text recognition, and it accepts very large images.

The inputs and output that matter

• model_version - the only input. Pick your model; the default qwen-vl-max is a sensible starting point.

The output is a single STRING carrying the model ID. Wire it straight into DashscopeModelCaller's model_version port, or into anything else that eats a string if you're feeling creative.

Two quick tips. Prefer -latest or the bare stable alias over a dated snapshot - Alibaba retires dated versions, so qwen-vl-max-2024-02-01 is a museum piece that may not serve requests. And don't be surprised by the bare qwen entry sitting in the list: it's a legacy alias that technically survives in the VLM list. You want qwen-vl-max or qwen-vl-plus, not that.

Install

This is one of five nodes in the ComfyUI-Dashscope pack, so you install the family together. In ComfyUI Manager, search ComfyUI-Dashscope and hit install. Or, by hand:

cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/neverbiasu/ComfyUI-Dashscope
pip install -r requirements.txt

Then restart ComfyUI. The only Python dependency is dashscope - that's the entire requirements.txt. No model files to download, because everything runs in the cloud.

One happy consequence of this node being a pure string picker: you can play with the loader before you've even set DASHSCOPE_API_KEY. The caller nodes are where the key matters, and they raise a clear error if it's missing. If you're just exploring, this node costs you nothing.