Smart show (TJ)

The universal viewer that actually earns its name

Smart show (TJ) is TJ_NODE's main universal debug viewer. Unlike its lighter sibling Show Any, this one auto-detects what type of data it's looking at and renders it properly - images in a viewer, text in a text area, JSON as an inspectable structure, files it can load. And like the whole pack's philosophy, it passes the original value through untouched on the output slot, so it slots into a wire without breaking anything downstream.

The README frames it as the pack's "Universal Debug Viewer," and that's exactly how to use it: as the one stop you can hang off a wire (or pull via wireless get_name) to actually see what's flowing. If you've ever been stuck staring at an image node that shows nothing, or a text node that dumps raw tensors, this is the "just look at it" node.

What it does

• Automatic type detection for IMAGE, STRING, FLOAT, INT, JSON, LIST, VIDEO, AUDIO - each gets an appropriate viewer rather than a blob of text.
• File loading - there's a file picker, so you can also just open a file (like example.png) and look at it directly, no wire required.
• edit_mode - a toggle that turns the display into an editable text view, plus a text_content field for direct text. Useful when you want to tweak a prompt or metadata string mid-debug.
• Wireless support - get_name receives from a provider, setnode_name re-publishes. This is the "embedded Get" pattern: you can monitor a wireless value without adding a visible Get node.

Output: output (the original value, passthrough).

The inputs that matter

• input (*) - the value to inspect.
• get_name - pull a wireless provider instead of wiring input.
• file - optionally open a file directly.
• edit_mode - display vs edit.

That's really it. Wire something in (or pick a provider), hit run, and the node shows you what's there.

Install it

Standard TJ_NODE install, no extra deps:

cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/designloves2/ComfyUI-TJ_NODE.git

Or ComfyUI Manager → search TJ_NODE, restart. Category: ✨ TJ_Node/Preview.

Where people get burned

Two things to know, both small. First, the pack's changelog mentions fixes for node size getting corrupted on load and new inputs wiping edits while in edit mode - if you hit either on an older version, update the pack. Second, edit_mode is for your own text work; the passthrough output always carries the original value, not your edited text, so don't try to use the editor as an inline text transformer - that's what Text Concatenate and friends are for. And a naming note so you don't confuse the family: Show Any is the minimal inspect node, Smart show is the richer viewer with file loading and edit mode - grab the one that matches how much UI you want in your debug path.