VULCA Traditions (List)

VULCA Traditions is the smallest node in the pack and the most underrated for newcomers: it takes no inputs and returns the list of cultural traditions VULCA can evaluate against, as JSON. That's it. But if you've ever stared at VULCA Evaluate's tradition field and wondered what valid values go there, this node is the answer key - wire it to a text preview and you get the exact strings to type.

The pack's whole premise is culturally-aware evaluation, and the traditions are the palette that premise is built on. The SDK ships thirteen of them: chinese_xieyi, chinese_gongbi, japanese_traditional, western_academic, islamic_geometric, watercolor, african_traditional, south_asian, contemporary_art, photography, brand_design, ui_ux_design, and default. So you can grade a sumi-e against xieyi, a brand logo against brand_design, a photo against photography - and default is the safe generic baseline. You can even define your own traditions as YAML files in the SDK, which is where custom rubrics come from.

How it works

It's a direct call to the SDK's traditions() function, serialized to JSON. No async, no provider, no key - it's a local static lookup, so it works even in a fully keyless setup. That makes it a nice zero-risk node to test that the pack installed correctly: if this node returns the list, the SDK is present and the plumbing works, and any other node that's failing is failing for a different reason.

Input and output

No inputs at all. One output: traditions_json - the JSON array of available tradition strings. Wire it into a text/JSON preview node to read it, or use it as a reference when filling in the tradition fields on VULCA Evaluate, VULCA Inpaint, or VULCA Evolution.

Install

Same as the whole pack:

cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes/
git clone https://github.com/vulca-org/comfyui-vulca
pip install "vulca>=0.12.0"

Restart ComfyUI, or install via ComfyUI Manager (search "VULCA").

The one trap is the pack-wide one: imports are lazy, so if the SDK isn't installed the node loads fine and then dies with ModuleNotFoundError: vulca when you run it. Run this node first after installing - it's the fastest smoke test the pack has, and it costs you nothing.