M Extended LoRA Loader (thumb+meta)

Every LoRA card on Civitai tells you the recommended weight, the trigger words, the base model. ComfyUI's built-in LoRA loader shows you exactly none of that - it's a filename dropdown and two strength sliders, and the moment you have thirty LoRAs you're guessing from filenames. M Extended LoRA Loader fixes precisely that: if you keep a .txt and a .png sitting next to the LoRA file, this node shows the metadata and the thumbnail right inside the node, and it can even set the strength for you.

Under the hood it's a perfectly normal LoRA loader - it calls the same comfy.sd.load_lora_for_models path the built-in node uses - with extras bolted on. When you pick a LoRA from the dropdown, it looks for <lora>.txt and <lora>.png beside the safetensors in your loras folder, reads the text as metadata, and loads the PNG as a preview image. A small frontend JS file then fetches both through a /mnodes/lora_sidecar API route and renders them in the node: the meta in a scrollable text box, the thumbnail right below it. The trigger word, trained words, and base model get picked out and shown at the top.

The inputs you'll actually touch are few. model and clip come from your checkpoint loader (or a previous LoRA loader if you're stacking). lora_name is the standard dropdown of everything in your loras folder. strength_model and strength_clip both default to 0.8. And here's the fun part: auto_strength_from_meta defaults to on, so if the sidecar text contains a recommendedWeight:"0.7" field or a <lora:name:0.7> tag, the loader quietly overwrites your sliders with that value. That's the "recommended weight" convention that people actually argue about on r/StableDiffusion - thread after thread about a LoRA overpowering the style at its advertised weight - automated away into "trust the card or don't."

Outputs: model and clip wire into the sampler and CLIP Text Encode exactly like any other loader. thumb is an IMAGE you can preview or even route somewhere. meta_text is the raw sidecar text. lora_name, strength_model, and strength_clip come out as plain values so you can log or reuse them. Note that the strength outputs reflect whatever the node actually used - so if auto-detection kicked in, they show the detected value, not what you typed.

Where people get burned:

• Thumbnails are base64-encoded and shipped over the HTTP API, so keep them small. The author's own comment says "if your thumbs are huge, resize them earlier" - a 4000px PNG in every node makes the UI drag.
• No .png sidecar means you get a 64×64 black placeholder image, not an error. No .txt means the node just prints "(no .txt sidecar)". Neither crashes anything.
• The auto-strength feature overrides your manual sliders whenever it finds a weight. If you deliberately run a LoRA above its recommended strength (common for character LoRAs fighting style bleed), flip auto_strength_from_meta off.

It ships in the ComfyUiNodes pack (repo: Madlumi/ComfyUiNodes, author "Madanie"), a small grab-bag of math, string, and workflow-glue nodes. Install it via ComfyUI Manager - search for "ComfyUiNodes" - or:

cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/Madlumi/ComfyUiNodes

Then restart ComfyUI. No pip requirements, no model downloads; the only runtime deps are the ones ComfyUI already ships (torch, PIL, aiohttp). It lives under Add Node → mnodes → util.

The one honest caveat: this is a personal-toolbox pack, not a big maintained project, so the sidecar convention is yours to set up - drop the .txt and .png next to each LoRA you care about and the loader rewards you instantly. It's the rare convenience node that makes you look at your LoRA folder once and stop guessing.