Model Downloader 🌐

Model Downloader 🌐 is the "find a model on CivitAI, paste the URL, walk away" node. It downloads checkpoints, LoRAs, and other assets from CivitAI, HuggingFace, or any direct URL straight into your ComfyUI models folders - no browser, no terminal wget, no digging through .cache to find where the file actually landed. It's an output node, so you drop it into a graph, give it a URL, and run it.

How it works

The node sniffs the URL and routes to the right handler - CivitAI, HuggingFace, or a raw custom link. The CivitAI and HuggingFace paths understand their platforms: model-page URLs resolve to the actual download (including specific versions if that's what you linked), and HuggingFace blob/resolve URLs work with branch/revision support. It reports progress with speed, skips the file if it already exists (or re-downloads if you check force_download), respects ComfyUI's "Cancel current run" button, and cleans up partial downloads if you cancel mid-transfer. API tokens are supported for gated or private models on both platforms.

Inputs

• url - the download link. This is the whole job; the placeholder shows the CivitAI and HuggingFace formats.
• save_path - where it lands, default models/checkpoints. Relative paths resolve against your ComfyUI root, so models/loras puts it in the LoRA folder, models/checkpoints in checkpoints, and so on.
• filename (optional) - override the auto-detected filename.
• api_token (optional) - for gated/private assets.
• force_download (optional) - re-download even if the file exists.

No outputs - it's a terminal node. The UI reports what it did.

The right way to use it

Two patterns make this genuinely useful. First, reproducible workflows: a workflow that fetches its own model via a downloader node is a workflow anyone can run without hunting for assets. Second, quick experiments: you want to try that new checkpoint that's trending, you paste the CivitAI page URL into the node, queue it, and by the time it's done the file is already in the right folder. You do need to refresh your Load Checkpoint dropdown to see the new file - ComfyUI scans the folder at startup.

Installing it

Pack install: ComfyUI Manager → "ComfyUI-KikoTools" → Install → restart, under ComfyAssets → Utils. Manual:

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

Restart ComfyUI. No model files ship with the pack.

Gotchas

The real warning here is a security one, and it applies to all downloader nodes, not just this one: only feed it URLs you actually trust. ComfyUI custom nodes run arbitrary code with your user-level access, and the ecosystem has had real malware incidents; a downloader node that fetches from a URL you were told to "just paste" is a prime attack vector. Stick to the official CivitAI/HuggingFace pages you found yourself. Also watch the save_path - a wrong folder name means the model lands somewhere ComfyUI never scans, and you'll spend twenty minutes wondering why it isn't in the dropdown. And if a private model fails, it's almost always a missing or wrong api_token, not the node.