Playbook Float (External)

Playbook Float looks like a boring slider wrapper, but the id field is hiding a trick: if you type a number into it, that number becomes the output. That's not a bug - it's the entire design, and understanding it is the difference between this node making sense and making you angry.

The context: this ships in Playbook Nodes, the ComfyUI half of Playbook3D, a cloud 3D render service. The "External" nodes are controls for workflows that run on their platform - the web UI injects values into them, and the workflow reacts. For a float, the platform writes the value into the id field. Locally, when nothing is injecting anything, the node falls back to default_value. But if you happen to put a number in id yourself, the node uses that instead, clamped to your min/max range.

The inputs that matter

• id - string, default "Node ID". On the Playbook3D cloud this is where the platform injects the real value. Locally, type a number here to override.
• label - metadata for their web UI. Does nothing locally.
• min and max - float range, defaults 0 to 1. The output is always clamped into this range, whether it came from id or default_value.
• default_value - optional float, default 0. This is what you get when id isn't a number.

Output is a single float. The logic in the source is: if id is empty or not a digit string, return default_value clamped to [min, max]; if id is a number, return that number clamped. So on a local machine, the most predictable way to use it is: leave id alone, set min/max, set default_value. Done. It's a clamped float constant - useful enough for controlling strength values like denoise or control weight in a shared graph.

Install

Standard pack install: ComfyUI Manager → Playbook Nodes, or:

cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/playbook3d/playbook3d-comfyui-nodes

Restart ComfyUI. No API key needed for this node - it never touches the network. No models, no dependencies beyond numpy, which ComfyUI ships.

Troubleshooting

The classic confusion is setting default_value and wondering why the output isn't what you typed - because you also left a digit in id. Empty id or a non-numeric id routes through default_value; a numeric id wins. If the number you get back looks wrong, check whether it's being clamped: an id of 5 with max 1 returns 1, silently. And one real footgun: the float you type into default_value is fine, but if you paste a number with a comma or extra whitespace into id, it's not a valid digit string and the node quietly ignores it. Keep both fields clean and this node behaves.