StyleModelLoader_motorway_edition

StyleModelLoader is the boring but necessary first half of the style-model story: it loads a style model file from your models/style_models folder and hands you a STYLE_MODEL object. On the Motorway this is a source node - it has no upstream connections, so the MOTORWAY input is optional, and it can kick off a pipe by itself. You pick the model from a dropdown, it loads, and the STYLE_MODEL lands in the Motorway under the key you choose.

Style models are the SDXL-ecosystem add-ons that apply a consistent visual style by re-encoding conditioning (sdxl_style models from the SDXL era being the most common). You'll almost always use this node right before a StyleModelApply motorway-ed edition: the loader puts the STYLE_MODEL into the pipe, and the apply node reads it back out by key and fuses it with your conditioning. On its own it does nothing - it's a loader, its whole job is to make the object available.

What to set

• style_model_name - the dropdown of .safetensors files in your ComfyUI/models/style_models/ folder. Drop a style model in there, refresh, and it appears.
• OUTPUT_STYLE_MODEL_key (default STYLE_MODEL) - the Motorway key the loaded model is written under.

Output is the MOTORWAY with the STYLE_MODEL stored under that key. Note there's no strength here - that knob lives on the apply node, not the loader.

Installing it

cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/agilly1989/ComfyUI_agilly1989_motorway

Restart; it's under agilly1989 Nodes → Motorway-ed → loaders. ComfyUI Manager installs the pack too. No pip dependencies - the motorway-ed nodes are pure wrappers.

Where people get burned

The dropdown comes up empty until you actually have a style model file in models/style_models. If the list is blank, that's a missing file, not a broken node - grab an sdxl-style .safetensors, put it in the folder, restart or refresh, and it'll show up.

Then the Motorway key trap: StyleModelApply (the motorway-ed one) reads by the key you set here - defaults are STYLE_MODEL on both sides, so they match, but if you rename one side, rename both. Keys are case-sensitive and exact; 'MotorwayClass' object has no attribute 'hash_' means a key isn't in the pipe. And the pack is beta - the auto-cloned motorway-ed nodes have been toggled on and off across releases, so a node disappearing after an update is upstream churn, not you.