Remote Text Switch (GeN13)

If you keep your prompt variants in a Text Switch chain - box 1 through box 25, numbered straight through however many nodes you tack on - the place you select the box lives at the start of the chain. Which is fine until the chain has fifteen nodes on it and you're working at the far end. Now every prompt change is a scroll-and-hunt expedition.

Remote Text Switch (GeN13) is the remote control for that. It shows which box is currently selected and its title, gives you ‹ › buttons to step through, and outputs the number. Put one next to wherever you're actually working, and stop scrolling.

What's on the node

• channel - the clone group, default switch. Multiple Remote Text Switches on the same channel share the number, the auto_next setting and bypass, so a remote in one corner of the canvas and another in a subgraph can't disagree about which prompt is live.
• value - the box number, 1 to 9999. Numbering continues across the whole Text Switch chain, so box 30 might be node three of the chain - you address the box, not the node.
• auto_next - OFF or NEXT. On NEXT, after each queue the selection moves to the next box with content, skipping empty ones and wrapping back to the first at the end. That's the difference between a batch that generates your three prompt variants and a batch that generates variant one three times.

Output: INT, the box number. That goes into Text Switch's select_num input. The README also notes it can pass through Set / Get - handy if the Text Switch is inside a subgraph and you need the value to cross the boundary as a named variable rather than a wire.

How it fits the switch chain

Worth stating plainly because the two nodes look similar: Text Switch is where the prompts live. Remote Text Switch is the dial. You have one switch chain, one selection, and as many remotes as you want pointing at it.

The chain design itself is the clever bit. Boxes are named, collapsible, and the selected box stays in view via a pick row on the first node; the ‹ › arrows skip empty boxes rather than stepping through them one at a time. Only the selected box's upstream branch executes, which means a chain of 20 prompts costs you one prompt's worth of compute. That's why this pattern beats a pile of disabled CLIP Text Encode nodes.

Adding the remote doesn't change any of that. It just moves the selection widget to arm's reach.

Where it's genuinely better than the built-in

ComfyUI has no concept of "the current prompt index" at the workflow level. You either wire one text source and edit it, or you keep several and bypass the ones you don't want. A numbered chain plus a remote gives you switching that survives being saved and shared: the selection is part of the workflow, and stepping is one click.

For a batch, auto_next plus a queue count of 3 is the idiomatic use - three prompts, three renders, one click, no prompt text duplicated anywhere.

Installing

Manager → search GeN13 → install → restart. Manual:

cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/heigen13/ComfyUI-GeN13
pip install -r ComfyUI-GeN13/requirements.txt

requirements.txt is one line - nvidia-ml-py, for the pack's monitor strip beside the Run button. The switch and its remote are frontend JavaScript over a small Python node; the backend just receives an index. No models, no downloads. On a portable build, install with python_embeded\python.exe -m pip.

The pack ships a Text Switch chain example workflow in the ComfyUI Templates panel under ComfyUI-GeN13 (and in example_workflows), which is the fastest way to see the ordering before you build your own.

Practical snags

The number is absolute, not relative. Delete box 4 from a 20-box chain and everything after it shifts down by one - your remote will point at a different prompt. It still runs, it's just not the prompt you chose.

Empty boxes are skipped by auto_next and by the arrows, but you can still land on one by typing its number. If the output text is empty, check whether the box you selected has content in the right chain - numbering continues across nodes, so "box 12" might be in a part of the chain you forgot you'd added.

And if you're using select_num from somewhere other than a Remote Text Switch (a Counter, say, or an INT from elsewhere), the same absolute numbering applies. Counter's increment_reset_after_end with start 1 and end 3 is a tidy way to cycle three prompts across a batch - which is essentially what auto_next does, with more control and one more node.