How nodes connect
Everything in Node Composer happens by wiring one card’s output into another card’s input. Once you can read the rings, the whole app makes sense — so start here.
Rings
Inputs sit on the left edge of a card, outputs on the right. Each one is a small ring, and it tells you two things: its colour is the kind of thing it carries, and the letter or number inside it is which input it is.
Green carries a prompt, blue a picture, amber a video, a deeper blue a sound, and orange a LoRA. A ring is hollow while nothing is connected, and fills with colour once it is — the quickest way to see at a glance what a card still needs.
| Ring | What it is |
|---|---|
| P | A prompt |
| I | Add a picture |
| FL | A video’s first and last frame, on the cloud models that use them |
| V | A video |
| A | A sound |
| L | A LoRA, on models that run on this Mac — orange, where the last frame’s L is blue, and a card never has both |
Numbers (1, 2, 3…) are for what comes in a row and in order: the pictures on a generator, in the order they’re sent to the model, the LoRAs, a Prompt Concat’s prompts, and the outputs of a Prompt card or a Prompt Split. Hover any ring to see its name, and a thumbnail of what’s wired in.
A card with several inputs folds them into a single dot at rest, showing how many wires are in — or + when there are none — and fans them out as the pointer comes near. View › Show All Handles keeps them all open.
Rings appear as you fill them
Cards that take several pictures don’t show ten empty rings up front. Instead you see the rings you’ve filled, plus one empty ring waiting — an I for pictures, hollow until something lands in it. Connect something and it takes the next number, with a fresh empty I appearing below. Remove one in the middle and the rest close up, so there’s never a gap — except on a 3D card, where each number is a view and keeps its place.
- Making a wire: drag from an output ring to an input ring.
- Moving or removing one: drag the wire out of its input ring and drop it on another ring, or on nothing to remove it.
- Reordering: drop a wire on another numbered ring of the same card, and the others shift along.
- Starting from a wire: drag a wire out of a ring and let go on empty canvas, and a menu offers the cards that can take it — the new one comes already wired.
What can plug into what
A wire only lands on a ring of the same kind. Prompt rings take a Prompt card, a Prompt Text, a Prompt Concat, a part of a Prompt Split, or a Workflow’s prompt. Picture and video rings take the matching media: a picture or a clip on the canvas, a result from another card, or a Media Placeholder once it’s filled. Sound rings take an Audio card, and LoRA rings a LoRA card.
If you try to connect something of the wrong kind, the wire simply won’t land — no error, nothing breaks. And if a wire does connect but the card’s model can’t use it — usually because you’ve wired in more pictures than the model takes — it stays in place but turns red: not supported by the model. Switch to a model that takes more, and it comes back into play.
Switching model moves the wires the new one can’t take to a free ring of the same kind, or takes them off.
Taking a prompt from a result
A finished picture or clip passes on the picture or the clip, not the prompt that made it. To reuse that prompt, right-click the card and choose Copy Prompt, then Paste Prompt on a Prompt Text or a generator — see Prompt Text.
How a prompt flows
Wire a Prompt card into an Image or Video card’s prompt ring, and the card’s prompt becomes read-only, showing the upstream text live, under the name of the card it comes from. Re-run the Prompt card and the downstream text updates immediately — it’s a live connection, not a copy. Disconnect it, and the card goes back to whatever you’d written there before.
If the upstream card is still writing when you hit Generate, the app won’t fire with an empty prompt — it waits and starts automatically once the prompt is ready.