🐯 YFG Random Prompt From File

Wildcard nodes are the usual answer to "I want variety," but they're also a whole ecosystem to learn. If you already keep prompts in a plain .txt file - a queue of A/B tests, a batch of concepts, a changelog of things you've tried - YFG Random Prompt From File is a much smaller hammer. Point it at the file and every run it hands you a positive prompt, its negative, and a name straight out of the sockets. No wildcard syntax, no extra swap node, no CLIP-encode rig to build.

The file format

Plain text, entries separated by a line of hyphens (any number works):

positive: a cozy cabin in the snow
negative: blurry, watermark, lowres
name: Cabin Test A
----
positive: neon city at night
negative:
----

positive: is required. negative: may be empty - you just leave the line blank after the colon. name: is optional and defaults to the filename. Files must be UTF-8.

How it works

The node parses the file once and caches the entries, keyed by file modification time - repeat runs don't re-read anything until the file actually changes on disk. Then it picks. In random mode it draws from range_start..range_end, which auto-fill to 0..total−1 the moment you browse a file. In by_index mode it uses the INDEX widget directly, and INDEX auto-syncs to whatever was picked last run, so pinning a specific prompt is just a dropdown flip away - no typing.

Two features matter for batch work. ensure_unique stops the node from repeating a pick within a session (within history_size and time_window_sec bounds), and the shuffle bag cycles through the whole pool before reshuffling - even coverage instead of clumps. There's also last_n_only + last_n_count, which restrict the pool to the newest N entries - handy when you keep appending prompts to the bottom of the file and want only the fresh ones.

The random.org part

By default (random_source: auto) the node calls random.org's true-random API if you've configured a key, and silently falls back to a local PRNG otherwise. Setting up random.org means an account, an API key in random_org_api_key.json next to the node (or the RANDOM_ORG_API_KEY environment variable), and living with their API quotas. My take: skip it. The local PRNG is perfectly fine for prompt variety, and you shouldn't create an account for this - the true-random option is a nice-to-have for people already paying for a random.org key, not a reason to get one.

Outputs

• positive / negative - wire both into your CLIPTextEncode.
• name - the name: field, or the filename stem.
• index_current / index_previous / total_count - the pick, the previous pick, and how many prompts the file has. Feed index_current into a YFG Display Value if you want to know which prompt produced which image.
• file_path / file_name - for logging or downstream nodes.

There are also 📄 Browse and 🕐 Recent buttons on the node for picking files server-side, and your recent files are remembered in yfg_file_history.json.

Where people get burned

If a block doesn't parse, it's silently skipped with a note in the console - so a typo'd positive: line means one fewer prompt in the pool and you might not notice for a while. Move or delete the file and the node returns nothing; re-browse to point it at the new path. And the UTF-8 requirement is real: a file saved as Windows-1252 with curly quotes or accented characters can fail to parse blocks that look fine in a text editor.

Installing it

Same story as every node in the YFG Comical pack - install once, it's all there:

cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/gonzalu/ComfyUI_YFG_Comical

or search YFG Comical in ComfyUI Manager, then restart. Dependencies install automatically; no model downloads. Look for it under 🐯 YFG/📝 Prompts, and check the pack's example workflows if you want a ready-made wiring.