ComfyUI Model Directory Layout (CT 204 Reference)

Canonical path inside the LXC: /opt/ComfyUI/models/

Directory-to-Node Mapping

Directory	ComfyUI Node Type	Example Models
`checkpoints/`	Load Checkpoint	legacy `.ckpt`, `.safetensors`
`diffusion_models/`	Load Diffusion Model	Flux, SD3, Ideogram, etc.
`text_encoders/`	CLIP Text Encode	T5, Qwen-VL, CLIP-L, etc.
`vae/`	Load VAE	SD VAE, Flux VAE
`unet/`	deprecated alias for diffusion_models	—
`clip/`	Load CLIP	CLIP models (some workflows use this instead of text_encoders)
`clip_vision/`	CLIP Vision Encode	image-to-text encoders
`controlnet/`	Load ControlNet	`.safetensors` control nets
`loras/`	Load LoRA	`.safetensors` LoRAs
`embeddings/`	Embedding	textual inversion files
`upscale_models/`	Upscale Model	ESRGAN, RealESRGAN
`vae_approx/`	VAE Decode (taesd)	TAESD approx decoder

Model Source URLs

HuggingFace

Always use resolve URL + -O filename:

cd /opt/ComfyUI/models/diffusion_models
wget -c "https://huggingface.co/Comfy-Org/Ideogram-4/resolve/main/diffusion_models/ideogram4_fp8_scaled.safetensors" -O ideogram4_fp8_scaled.safetensors

blob URL → HTML preview page (wrong)
resolve URL → 302 to CDN, then binary (correct)
-O ensures predictable filename regardless of redirect

CivitAI

CivitAI model page is NOT the download URL:

# WRONG - downloads HTML page
wget "https://civitai.com/models/12345/model-name"

# CORRECT - api download endpoint
wget "https://civitai.com/api/download/models/67890?type=Model&format=SafeTensor" -O model.safetensors

Verifying Downloads

ls -lh /opt/ComfyUI/models/diffusion_models/
file /opt/ComfyUI/models/diffusion_models/*.safetensors

file should report data or similar binary type, not HTML document.

Parallel Downloads

When queueing multiple large models, run each in background and poll:

# Start 3 downloads in parallel
pct exec 204 -- bash -c 'cd /opt/ComfyUI/models/text_encoders && nohup wget -c --tries=0 --read-timeout=30 "..." -O qwen3vl_8b_fp8_scaled.safetensors > /tmp/qwen_dl.log 2>&1 &'
pct exec 204 -- bash -c 'cd /opt/ComfyUI/models/diffusion_models && nohup wget -c --tries=0 --read-timeout=30 "..." -O ideogram4_fp8_scaled.safetensors > /tmp/ideogram_dl.log 2>&1 &'

# Poll
pct exec 204 -- tail -5 /tmp/qwen_dl.log
pct exec 204 -- ls -lh /opt/ComfyUI/models/

Disk Space Planning

Model Type	Typical Size	Notes
FLUX/SD XL diffusion model	7–17 GB	FP8/FP16
Text encoder (T5-XXL)	10 GB	often largest single file
VAE	300–800 MB	small
LoRA	50–500 MB	small, many files
Checkpoint (.ckpt)	4–7 GB	deprecated for Flux

Total for a single workflow: 20–35 GB minimum. Plan LXC rootfs accordingly.

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