Input (STRING)

This is a text field that outputs what you type. That's it. And yet it earns its place, because ComfyUI has a structural gap this node plugs: the built-in STRING widgets on many nodes can't be fed by another node - they're dead ends you can only type into. RF_TextInput turns your text into a wire, and a wireable STRING is what every text-processing chain in ComfyUI wants as its source.

Think of it as the input node for a string pipeline. You type a prompt, a tag list, a filename fragment - and the STRING output carries it to whatever node is downstream, the same way a Load Image node carries pixels to a sampler. If you're building anything that manipulates text before it reaches the model, you need a source like this one.

How it works

One input, value - a multiline STRING widget. One output, STRING, which is a straight passthrough of whatever you typed. That's the whole mechanism: the node exists so your text has an output port instead of being trapped in a widget.

A useful detail: value is a plain widget, not a wire-in port. You can't connect another node into this one - it's a source, not a pass-through. If you want to chain text, you connect this node's output onward, or grab the pack's concatenate/replace nodes for the manipulation steps in between.

When it beats the alternatives

ComfyUI does ship text inputs in various places, but they tend to be widgets attached to specific nodes - you can't reroute them or feed them from logic. When you want one canonical text source that several branches of the graph read from, a dedicated input node is cleaner than duplicating text in three widgets. It also makes a workflow more readable: the text you're meant to edit sits in its own obvious box.

Installing it

It's part of RF Nodes (foxtrot-roger/comfyui-rf-nodes). Install via ComfyUI Manager (search "RF Nodes") and restart, or:

cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/foxtrot-roger/comfyui-rf-nodes

Pure Python, zero dependencies, no model files. The pack is essentially unmaintained since January 2024, but a passthrough text node doesn't age.

Gotchas

• You can't wire into value - don't expect to connect a list or another node's output here.
• The output is a single STRING, not a list. If you need multiple strings, the pack's split-lines node ("Options (STRING)") is the one that produces a list.
• It won't magically format your text - what you type is what comes out, multiline and all.

It's the least glamorous node in the pack and arguably the most fundamental. Every string pipeline needs a wellspring.