Select Chapters

Select Chapters is the node that keeps a novel-to-video run honest. It lives in yuyuki's minimax_h3_novel_pipeline, a pack that does no video generation itself. Read the README and you'll see the actual job: it reads a text novel, extracts a "reference catalog" of the characters, locations and objects in each chapter, consolidates those into one registry so that Alice in chapter 3 is the same Alice as in chapter 7, and then writes the MiniMax H3 scene prompts you'd feed to a separate Reference-to-Video node. All of that language-model work runs through LM Studio's OpenAI-compatible API on your own machine - no MiniMax cloud key, no LLM phone-home. And the whole chain starts with you pointing this node at some text files.

It looks like a glorified variable, and honestly, that's the point.

What it actually does

Under the hood Select Chapters is a pass-through. Give it paths, and its run() returns a little dictionary wrapped in a custom ComfyUI type, MINIMAX_CHAPTER_SELECTION. It doesn't read the files, doesn't call the model, doesn't even validate that the chapters exist - that happens later, on the Extract node, which is where you'll see the error if you pointed at nothing useful.

So why does a file picker get its own node instead of a text field on Extract and Generate? Because both of those stages need the same chapter list, and the output's custom type is ComfyUI's way of enforcing it. Wire chapter_selection into Extract Chapter References (which builds each chapter's catalog) and into Generate H3 Prompts (which writes per-chapter scene prompts), and the two can never drift apart. If they did - you type one set of paths in Extract and another in Generate - you'd get H3 prompts that reference picture briefs that were never extracted. The node is a "select once, fan out" hub, and the type system keeps you from fanning it out wrong.

Folder inputs are scanned non-recursively and sorted naturally, so chapter_10.md lands after chapter_2.md the way you actually meant. Supported files are .txt, .md, .markdown and .pdf (PDFs read via pypdf).

The two inputs that matter

There are only two, and you'll mostly touch the first:

• chapter_paths - a multiline string, one chapter file or folder per line, relative to ComfyUI's input directory. As the author's own tooltip says, "Relative paths start there." This is the field you type into.
• saved_chapter - a dropdown of chapters you've previously uploaded through the node's picker button. Handy for re-runs, but note chapter_paths wins if both are set; leave it blank unless you're reusing an upload.

It has no lmstudio_config input, which makes it the one node in the pack you can drop on the canvas and execute without an LM Studio server even running.

Installing it

You install the whole pack - this node can't come alone:

cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/yuyuki/minimax_h3_novel_pipeline
python -m pip install -r minimax_h3_novel_pipeline/requirements.txt

Use the Python that runs ComfyUI (the embedded one, on portable installs), then restart and refresh the browser. The pack's real dependencies are thin - the OpenAI SDK, httpx and pypdf - and the node shows up under MiniMax H3 Novel alongside the other six. ComfyUI Manager users can just search "MiniMax H3 Novel" or the repo title ComfyUI-Minimax_H3_Novel_Pipeline. You'll also need Python 3.10+.

Where people get burned

The one real trap is path discipline. Chapter paths must stay inside ComfyUI's input directory (ComfyUI/input); absolute paths elsewhere and .. traversal are rejected. If your novel lives on your Desktop and Extract answers with "No supported chapter files found.", that's this rule biting - copy the chapters in or use the picker button on the node, which uploads into input/minimax_h3_novel/ and fills chapter_paths for you. Refresh after uploading and they appear in saved_chapter.

Two smaller notes. The picker and the LM Studio settings only work over a direct local browser connection to ComfyUI (like http://localhost:8188) - remote, cross-origin and forwarded-proxy requests are rejected, so if you're hitting ComfyUI through a tunnel, type paths instead of clicking. And remember this node is inert on its own: nothing happens until its output reaches Extract or Generate, so if you're testing and "nothing runs," check your wiring, not the picker.