basicIn_string

The simplest node in this whole batch: a multiline text field in, a STRING out. No parsing, no type conversion, no dropdown. If you need a chunk of reusable text - a prompt fragment, a filename pattern, a label - wired into more than one place in an Apt_Preset graph, this is the primitive that holds it.

What it is

One input, input_text, a multiline STRING defaulting to empty. One output, text, carrying exactly what you typed. That's the whole node, and the lack of anything clever is the point - this pack's IO_Port category is full of these single-purpose primitives specifically so you're never stuck retyping the same value into three different widgets that are supposed to match.

Where it actually earns its keep

The obvious use is text you want to reuse verbatim in two places - a shared prefix across several prompts, a consistent negative-prompt boilerplate, a filename template feeding both a save node and a log. Less obviously, it's also a clean handoff point when you're building a workflow for someone else to reuse: put the thing they're meant to edit in one clearly-labeled basicIn_string node near the top of the graph, rather than making them hunt through several nested text-encode nodes to find the one field that actually matters.

How it compares to its siblings

This pack ships three text-shaped primitives that are easy to confuse: basicIn_string (this one - plain text in, plain text out, nothing else), basicIn_input (also a multiline box, but it also emits int and float versions of whatever you typed, in case a downstream node wants a number instead), and basicIn_clip (which pairs a positive and negative text box directly with a CLIP model and outputs conditioning, skipping the raw-string step entirely). If you just need a string, reach for this one - it's the one with the least going on, which is exactly the point when all you want is a label to reuse.

Installing it

Search "ComfyUI-Apt_Preset" in ComfyUI Manager, or:

cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/cardenluo/ComfyUI-Apt_Preset.git

Run install.bat on Windows (pip install -r requirements.txt on Linux/Mac), restart ComfyUI. Nothing to download - it's the simplest possible primitive.

Common issues

There's genuinely very little to break here. The one thing worth double-checking: if this node is feeding a prompt into a CLIP text encoder and you're getting unexpected results, remember this node does zero validation or trimming - a stray trailing newline or extra whitespace you didn't notice while typing gets passed through exactly as-is. If a downstream comparison or exact-match check is behaving strangely, that's usually where to look before suspecting anything more complicated. Otherwise, treat it as what it is: a label with a wire attached, not a place bugs tend to live.