SHA-3 Hashing

SHA-3 is what happens when the crypto community runs a public competition to design a replacement for SHA-2, and the winner is a completely different machine. The algorithm is built on a sponge construction (the "Keccak" you'll see in older references), which means it's structurally unlike SHA-2 and SHA-1 - it's not a drop-in upgrade, it's a separate family that happens to produce the same style of output. If a puzzle says "SHA3", this node is the one that satisfies it; if it says "SHA-256", use SHA2.

Practical reality check: SHA-2 isn't broken and nobody's fleeing to SHA-3. But SHA-3 is the modern standard, it's immune to the length-extension attack class that affects SHA-2, and the ARG Toolkit ships it for the same reason it ships everything else - so you can build and solve puzzles that use it without leaving ComfyUI.

How it works

Same shape as the pack's other hash nodes:

• key1 (BYTESLIKE) - your input data.
• algorithm - dropdown with SHA3_224, SHA3_256, SHA3_384, SHA3_512.

Output is hash_bytes, a BYTESLIKE digest. The number in the name is the output size in bits: SHA3_256 gives 32 bytes, SHA3_512 gives 64. Everything runs through the cryptography library, so you're getting genuine NIST-standard SHA-3, not an approximation.

Which flavor

• SHA3_256 - the default choice, same output size as SHA-256 so it slots into the same workflows.
• SHA3_512 - double-size digest if a puzzle wants it.
• SHA3_224 / SHA3_384 - the truncations, for completeness.

There's no formatting or encoding input here: bytes in, bytes out. Pair it with the pack's String2Hex when you need the human-readable hex form for a checksum.

Installing it

Part of ComfyUI ARG Toolkit - ComfyUI Manager (search "ComfyUI ARG Toolkit") or:

cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/AzelusLightvale/ComfyUI-ARG-Toolkit

Restart ComfyUI. Deps come via Manager; no model downloads.

Common issues

• Bytes errors - feed it bytes, not raw strings.
• Matching output length - a puzzle asking for a 64-char hex checksum almost certainly means SHA3_256, not SHA3_224. Read the length before you blame the node.
• Don't overthink the algorithm choice: unless the puzzle names a specific variant, SHA3_256 and SHA-256 are interchangeable in how you wire them, and the choice between the two nodes is a matter of which family the puzzle uses.