Steps

HelperNodes_Steps is a single integer on a slider: how many denoising steps your sampler gets. Default 25, range 1–100, one output. It is the least glamorous node in this pack and that's exactly what makes it the right tool for a job most people get wrong.

The job isn't "set a number." It's "set the number once, in one visible place, and let every node that needs it read it from the same wire." KSampler wants steps, and HelperNodes_SaveImage wants to record steps in your metadata. With this node, both get the same value with no chance of them drifting apart because you edited one and forgot the other.

How it works

A value node, nothing more. The steps input is an INT with a default of 25, a floor of 1 and a ceiling of 100, step 1. You set it, it returns the same integer as the steps output. No clamping surprises, no math, no interaction with the sampler - that's all downstream.

Inputs and outputs

• steps - required INT, 1–100, default 25.
• steps output - the same INT. Wire into KSampler's steps and Save Image's steps.

The honest take

The real question the node can't answer for you is what number to use, and the honest answer is "it depends on your model, not your habits." SD 1.5 and SDXL still behave well around 20–30 steps. Distilled models - Turbo, Lightning, the guidance-distilled checkpoints - are trained to finish in 1–8 steps, and cranking them to 25 is wasting time or actively hurting. The 25 default is a reasonable universal starting point, not a law. Where this node earns its keep is the metadata trail: when you're comparing 40 outputs and wondering why one looks different, the step count is sitting in the file, stamped by Save Image.

Install

Search ComfyUI-Helper-Nodes in ComfyUI Manager, or clone it:

cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/teward/ComfyUI-Helper-Nodes

Restart after. Dependencies are the usual pack set - numpy, pillow, piexif, whratio - with Manager handling them. Nothing to download model-wise.

Troubleshooting

If you find yourself stuck at 25 forever, that's a workflow habit, not a bug - the node's max of 100 is far beyond what anyone sane runs. About the only way to break it is to wire the output into the wrong input, and an INT-to-FLOAT mismatch will tell you loudly.