How nodes work
Every step of a flow in Node Composer is a node, a card on the canvas. Some nodes make things (pictures, clips, 3D objects, prompts), others arrange or pass along what the first ones made. You wire them together, and what comes out of one card goes into the next.
The Prompt bar, where you write prompts and set models, has a page of its own.
Adding a node
- From the dock: with nothing selected, the Prompt bar at the bottom of the canvas folds into a dock with every node you can add, grouped as Generate, Compose and Connectors. Click a symbol to add that node in the middle of the canvas, or drag it to where you want it.
- From a wire: drag a wire out of a ring and let go on empty canvas. A menu offers the nodes that can take it, and the new card comes already wired.
Rings and wires
- Input rings are on a card’s left edge. Output rings are on its right edge.
- A ring’s colour says what it carries: green for a prompt, blue for a picture, amber for a video, blue for a sound, orange for a LoRA.
- A ring’s letter says what it is for:
| Letter | Meaning |
|---|---|
| P | A prompt |
| I | Add a picture. Once a picture is wired in, the ring shows its number (1, 2, 3…) and a new I ring appears after it, up to what the model takes |
| F | A video’s first frame |
| LL | A video’s last frame on cloud models, or a LoRA on models that run on this Mac (a card never has both) |
| V | A video |
| A | A sound |
- Folded rings: a card with several inputs folds them into a single dot at rest. The dot shows how many wires are in, or + when there are none. The rings fan out as the pointer comes near. View › Show All Handles keeps them open.
- Hovering a ring shows its name and a thumbnail of what it carries.
- Red ring: the card’s model can’t use what is wired into it. For example, a picture beyond the number the model accepts stays wired but is drawn red: not supported by the model.
- Making a wire: drag from an output ring to an input ring.
- Moving or removing a wire: drag a wire out of an input ring and drop it on another ring, or on nothing to remove it.
- Reordering: numbered rings (pictures, LoRAs, Prompt Concat’s prompts) change order when you drop a wire on another ring of the same card. The others shift along.
There’s more on wiring in How nodes connect.
Above the card
- Left: the card’s name, such as IMAGE, VIDEO or PROMPT CONCAT.
- Right, when you hover, select or approach the card: its buttons. Which ones a card has depends on its kind:
| Button | What it does |
|---|---|
| ? | Opens this help |
| Star | Adds the result on show to your Favorites |
| Save As… | Saves the file as it was made |
| Eye | Opens the result in the Preview |
| Pencil | Opens Edit Image (pictures only) |
| Bin | Deletes the result on show, or the card when it has none |
Results
- Generating cards keep their results: up to 20 per card, in a strip under the card. Click one to show it again. + New goes back to the draft to make another.
- Under the card, a line names the model, the size and the weight of the result on show.
- Whatever result is on show on a card is what its output ring passes on to the next card.