Donut Filler Clip (DEPRECATED)

DonutFillerClip is the clip-only half of the pack's stub-node family. It takes nothing in and emits one clip output: an empty placeholder object flagged as a filler. Its sibling DonutFillerModel covers the model side, and the combined DonutFiller emits both at once. If you've read the DonutFiller article, you already know the whole mechanism - the pack's merge nodes look for a marker on any input object and treat marked models or CLIPs as "not provided," skipping them during the merge. This node exists to put that marker on a CLIP socket specifically.

Why would you want a fake CLIP and not a fake model? The pack's WidenMerge CLIP node (DonutWidenMergeCLIP) merges text encoders, and if you're building a parameterized merge workflow where sometimes a CLIP slot is empty and sometimes it isn't, a filler keeps the graph fully wired without changing the merge's behavior. It's a plumbing convenience for graph templates, not a tool with a visible effect.

The honest take: this node is DEPRECATED, and the pack itself nudges you toward the combined DonutFiller for anything new. It stays registered so old workflows load. The only argument for the standalone version is precision - you want to fill a CLIP socket without introducing a spurious model object into the graph, which matters in editors that complain about unused outputs. Marginal, but it's the reason it exists.

Do not feed its output to a text encoder, a sampler, or anything that actually expects a real CLIP. The filler contract only means something to the pack's merge code; everywhere else it's just an empty object waiting to confuse you. If a workflow you downloaded uses it and you're not merging CLIPs, you can safely delete it and reconnect the real CLIP wire.

Install: it's part of the pack - ComfyUI Manager → search DonutNodes, or git clone into custom_nodes/ plus pip install -r requirements.txt with the same Python as ComfyUI. No downloads, nothing to configure. It's a stub; it behaves like one.