SDXL Steps (WLSH)

The README describes this one in a single line - "a single node that outputs three different integers for use as step count in SDXL workflows" - and the node itself matches that: it's a tiny math utility, not a sampler. What it's clearly built around is the classic SDXL base+refiner pattern, where you don't run one model for all your steps, you hand off partway through: the base model denoises from full noise down to some cutoff step, then a refiner model (or a second pass) picks up from there and finishes the job. Two KSamplerAdvanced nodes chained together, sharing a steps total but split by start_at_step/end_at_step, is the standard way to wire that in ComfyUI - and this node exists so you set that split in one place instead of retyping the same numbers into two different samplers.

Inputs and outputs: precondition (default 3), base (default 12), and total (default 20) - all plain integers, no image or model connections at all. It outputs pre, base, and total, mirroring the inputs straight through as separate wires you can send to different places in your graph. base and total map cleanly onto the familiar pattern above: run your first KSamplerAdvanced from step 0 to base, your second from base to total, and changing either number here updates both samplers at once instead of you hunting down two separate widgets.

Being straight about precondition: the pack's README doesn't spell out exactly what it's meant to gate beyond the name and its default of 3 - there's no further documentation on it beyond this one line. Given the shape of the other two outputs, the reasonable read is that it's a third checkpoint for workflows that split denoising into more than two stages (an early low-step pass before your main base run, for instance, if your workflow does something distinct in the first few steps). If you're not doing anything with a third stage, you can safely ignore this output and just use base/total for a standard two-stage split.

Installing it

ComfyUI Manager: search "wlsh_nodes" or "WLSH Nodes", install, restart. Manual: cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes && git clone https://github.com/wallish77/wlsh_nodes, then restart ComfyUI.

Common issues

Since this node is pure arithmetic with no validation against how you actually use the numbers downstream, the failure mode is entirely in the wiring: if your two KSamplerAdvanced nodes don't both reference the same total from this node (say, one has total wired in but the other has a hardcoded step count typed into its widget), your base/refiner split silently drifts out of sync the next time you change a value here. Make sure every sampler in the chain is actually pulling its numbers from this node's outputs, not from a stale hardcoded value left over from before you added it.