text_wildcards

Wildcards - picking a random line from a text file and dropping it into your prompt - are one of those ideas every dynamic-prompt tool eventually reimplements. text_wildcards is ComfyUI-Apt_Preset's version, and it's a good one: up to eight wildcard files, a fixed text prefix, a seed so the "random" is repeatable, and full-width/Chinese punctuation handled properly. If you've been faking wildcards with random nodes and string math, this is the tidy replacement.

It's part of the cardenluo mega-pack. Note up front: the pack is Chinese-first and barely referenced in English communities, so the node's own descriptions are in Chinese - but the face is readable, and the wildcard file convention is exactly what you'd hope.

How it works

text0 is your custom prefix - type anything, Chinese included. text1 through text8 are dropdowns listing available wildcard files; set each to None to skip that slot. Every selected file yields one randomly chosen line, and the picks are joined by output_join_rule (default Comma - which, like the rest of this pack, means a full-width ，; switch to Space or Pipe for ASCII work).

The seed is the star. Same seed, same picks, every time. That's the difference between "wildcards" and "chaos": you can keep a seed while changing only the seed to explore variations, then re-run an exact combo to debug. input_split_rule controls how each file's content is split into choices - default Line (one line = one choice), but you can split on commas, pipes, periods, or a custom_split string. So a file like red, green, blue works with the Comma rule, or line-per-choice if that's how it's laid out.

Where the files live

Two directories, and the name collision rule matters:

• ComfyUI/models/Apt_File/wildcards - "dir1" in the dropdown, wins on duplicate names.
• the pack's own wildcards/ folder - "base_path", ships with ~85 files (actor, bird, weapon, time, emotion, etc.). Add your own files here or in dir1 as .txt, UTF-8, and restart.

So you can override any built-in list by dropping a same-named file into models/Apt_File/wildcards. That's the intended workflow: your version, your way.

Inputs and outputs

• text0 - fixed prefix.
• text1–text8 - file dropdowns (None to skip).
• seed, input_split_rule, custom_split, output_join_rule, custom_join (only in Custom mode).
• Output: text - the assembled prompt string.

Installing it

ComfyUI Manager → search ComfyUI-Apt_Preset, or:

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

Restart. No extra model downloads for this node - the wildcard files come with the pack, and your own go into models/Apt_File/wildcards (created for you).

Common issues

A selected file that goes missing just logs a warning and skips that slot (with a Chinese note) rather than crashing - check console output if a slot silently comes up empty. Encoding: files should be UTF-8; anything else logs a warning and returns nothing. And the full-width comma default catches people who feed output straight into English tag models. Otherwise the only real gotcha is pack-wide: update the pack and your file dropdowns repopulate from disk, so paths won't drift.