SimpleBridge Store

Somewhere in your workflow you've got a value you want to use in two far-apart places, and the idea of dragging a wire across the whole canvas makes you want to close ComfyUI. That's the exact itch SimpleBridge Store scratches. Drop a value into an in-memory store under a name you choose, and the matching SimpleBridge Load node retrieves it anywhere else in the graph. No wires required.

This is the same "global variable" pattern the community has been asking for since 2023 - there's a recurring r/comfyui thread from back then asking for exactly this, with answers pointing at cg-use-everywhere, Impact Pack's sender/receiver nodes, or a set/get extension. SimpleBridge is the minimal version: a store, a load, and a name. The pack's own description frames it as "store a value with a chosen ID then load it anywhere in the workflow... to make linking less messy in my taste." That's the whole pitch, honestly stated.

The mechanism is almost comically simple. The pack keeps a module-level Python dict in memory. When you run the graph, store_value writes whatever it receives into that dict, keyed by your bridge_name, and prints the stored type to the console. Nothing touches disk, there's no database, no API. The value just lives inside the running ComfyUI process until you restart it (or reload custom nodes), and then it's gone. Internalize that one fact and most of the surprises disappear: bridge data doesn't survive a restart, and it isn't saved with your workflow. Load a saved workflow a week later and the Load node finds nothing until you run the Store again.

Only two inputs matter:

• bridge_name - the key, a plain string, default bridge1. It must match the Load node's name character-for-character; bridge1 and Bridge1 are different buckets.
• value - the thing you're stashing. Any type works: string, number, latent, image, even a model reference. That's the * any-type socket doing its job.

One thing to notice: the Store has no output sockets. It's marked as an output node, so it acts like a landmark or save node - you drop it in the graph, feed it a value, and it doesn't connect onward. Because there's no edge, ComfyUI can't guarantee the Store runs before a Load elsewhere in the graph. In practice ComfyUI still executes every node each run, and since the store persists across runs, the Load usually picks up a recent value. If you need ordering within a single run, the Load node's dependency input exists precisely to pin it down.

Where people get burned: storing nothing. If value isn't connected, the node prints Tried to store None and skips the write entirely - so you can silently end up with an empty bucket. Restarting ComfyUI, of course, empties every bucket. And don't trust the repo README for details - it's a half-finished template that still says git clone .../yourusername/enhanced-bridge-node.git. The source is what matters here, and the source is reassuringly small: no Python dependencies beyond ComfyUI's own APIs, no model files.

Install it via ComfyUI Manager (search "SimpleBridgeNode") or by hand:

cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/XchanBik/ComfyUI_SimpleBridgeNode

Then restart ComfyUI. Two minor notes: the pack also installs a hook that prints "MINIMAL HOOK" debug lines to your console on every run - harmless, just noise - and there are no dependencies or downloads to chase.

Worth it? For a quick "reuse this seed in two samplers" hack, absolutely - it's refreshingly tiny. If you're doing this at scale, the established packs handle it more robustly. But for the itch it scratches, this is the smallest thing that works.