XY Inputs: Steps //EasyUse

Comparison grids - same seed, same prompt, one variable sweeping across a row or column - are one of the oldest tricks in the SD toolbox for actually understanding what a parameter does instead of guessing. mcmonkey (SwarmUI's developer, and yes, the same person behind the dynamic-thresholding node also in this pack) built one of the original standalone tools for exactly this back in December 2022, before ComfyUI even had a native answer. Easy-Use's XY Inputs family is that same idea, wired for ComfyUI: this specific node builds the axis when the thing you're sweeping is step-related.

What it actually feeds

This node doesn't run anything by itself - it produces an X_Y output that plugs into Easy-Use's XY Plot node (not covered here, but it's the counterpart that actually renders the grid). Think of it as defining one axis: "here's the parameter, here's the range, here's how many points."

The inputs that matter

target_parameter is the dropdown that decides what this axis actually sweeps: steps, start_at_step, or end_at_step. Pick one, and only the fields relevant to that choice matter - the node exposes all three ranges regardless, but the unused ones are ignored.

• If target_parameter is steps, you set first_step and last_step - the axis runs from one step count to another.
• If it's start_at_step, you set first_start_step and last_start_step instead.
• If it's end_at_step, you set first_end_step and last_end_step.

batch_count (3 default) is how many points land on the axis between your first and last values - three columns or rows in the eventual grid. Push this up for a finer sweep, but remember every point is a full generation; a 3×3 grid across two axes is nine renders, not three.

When you'd actually reach for this

Step-count sweeps are genuinely useful for finding the knee of the curve on a new checkpoint or sampler - the point past which more steps stop buying you anything. start_at_step/end_at_step sweeps are more specialized: they're for when you're doing partial denoising (a refiner handoff, a second pass) and want to see exactly where in the schedule to make the cut, rather than guessing.

Installing it

ComfyUI Manager: search ComfyUI Easy Use, install, restart. By hand:

cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/yolain/ComfyUI-Easy-Use

Windows: double-click install.bat for dependencies. Linux/Mac: cd in and run pip install -r requirements.txt yourself. Restart ComfyUI.

Where people get stuck

The most common confusion is expecting this node to produce an image or a grid on its own - it doesn't; it's purely an axis definition and needs the XY Plot node downstream to do anything visible. Second: people set all three range pairs thinking they all apply simultaneously, then wonder why changing first_end_step did nothing - only the pair matching your target_parameter selection is read. And if your grid takes forever, that's not a bug, it's arithmetic: batch_count on this axis multiplied by whatever the other axis is sweeping is your total render count, and step sweeps in particular scale generation time directly, so a wide steps range on top of a wide second axis can turn a quick comparison into a very long queue.