ComfyUI Bridge

Generate images, faceswap, animate expressions, and do style transfer via a self-hosted ComfyUI instance running on your LAN. No cloud API — your GPU, your models.

Requirements

• ComfyUI Desktop (or server) running somewhere on your LAN
• ComfyUI Bridge server running on the same machine as ComfyUI (see Setup)
• uv installed on the machine running OpenClaw

Setup

1. Install the bridge server (on your ComfyUI machine)

The bridge is a lightweight FastAPI server that wraps ComfyUI's API:

git clone https://github.com/Bortlesboat/comfyui-bridge
cd comfyui-bridge
pip install -r requirements.txt
python bridge_server.py
# Listening on http://0.0.0.0:8100

2. Configure the skill

Set the bridge URL as an environment variable on your OpenClaw machine:

export COMFYUI_BRIDGE_URL=http://YOUR_COMFYUI_MACHINE_IP:8100

Or add it to your LaunchAgent/systemd service environment.

3. Required ComfyUI custom nodes (for all features)

Install via ComfyUI Manager:

• ReActor — faceswap
• ComfyUI-LivePortrait — expression animation
• ComfyUI_IPAdapter_plus — style transfer
• WAS Node Suite — utilities
• ComfyUI-GGUF — GGUF model support (optional, for FLUX)
• rgthree-comfy — workflow utilities

4. Recommended models

| Model | Use |

|---|---|

| Juggernaut XL Ragnarok | Architecture, objects, general |

| RealVisXL V5.0 Lightning | People, portraits, fast |

| FLUX.1 Dev Q5 GGUF | Maximum photorealism (slow, VRAM-heavy) |

Usage

All commands use the comfyui_generate.py script via uv run. Replace SKILL_SCRIPTS with the path to this skill's scripts/ directory.

Always use --no-media — include one MEDIA: /full/path/to/output.png in your text response instead.

1. Text to Image

uv run $SKILL_SCRIPTS/comfyui_generate.py \
  --prompt "your description" \
  --filename ~/.openclaw/media/outbound/output.png \
  --no-media

2. Image to Image

uv run $SKILL_SCRIPTS/comfyui_generate.py \
  --prompt "make it sunset" \
  -i /path/to/input.png \
  --strength 0.5 \
  --filename ~/.openclaw/media/outbound/output.png \
  --no-media

3. Faceswap (pipeline — best quality)

Swaps a face then runs img2img cleanup for natural blending. ~30 seconds total.

uv run $SKILL_SCRIPTS/comfyui_generate.py \
  --faceswap-pipeline \
  --source-face /path/to/source_face.png \
  -i /path/to/target.png \
  --cleanup-strength 0.40 \
  --filename ~/.openclaw/media/outbound/output.png \
  --no-media

4. Faceswap (basic)

uv run $SKILL_SCRIPTS/comfyui_generate.py \
  --faceswap \
  --source-face /path/to/source_face.png \
  -i /path/to/target.png \
  --filename ~/.openclaw/media/outbound/output.png \
  --no-media

5. Targeted Faceswap (specific face in group photo)

uv run $SKILL_SCRIPTS/comfyui_generate.py \
  --targeted-faceswap \
  --source-face /path/to/source_face.png \
  -i /path/to/group_photo.png \
  --target-face-index "1" \
  --filename ~/.openclaw/media/outbound/output.png \
  --no-media

Face indices: 0 = leftmost, 1 = second from left, "0,2" = first and third.

6. LivePortrait (expression animation)

uv run $SKILL_SCRIPTS/comfyui_generate.py \
  --liveportrait \
  -i /path/to/portrait.png \
  --expression-preset smile \
  --filename ~/.openclaw/media/outbound/output.png \
  --no-media

Presets: smile, surprised, wink, suspicious, derp, angry, sleepy

Fine-grained control: --smile (-0.3 to 1.3), --blink-val (-20 to 5), --eyebrow-val (-10 to 15), --aaa (-30 to 120, mouth open), --pitch/--yaw/--roll (-20 to 20, head rotation).

7. Style Transfer

Generate a new image in the style of a reference:

uv run $SKILL_SCRIPTS/comfyui_generate.py \
  --style-transfer \
  --style-ref /path/to/reference.png \
  --prompt "a portrait of a man" \
  --style-weight 0.85 \
  --filename ~/.openclaw/media/outbound/output.png \
  --no-media

8. Restyle

Apply a reference image's style to an existing photo:

uv run $SKILL_SCRIPTS/comfyui_generate.py \
  --restyle \
  --style-ref /path/to/reference.png \
  -i /path/to/photo.png \
  --style-weight 0.85 \
  --strength 0.65 \
  --filename ~/.openclaw/media/outbound/output.png \
  --no-media

9. Enhanced mode

Add --enhanced to any command for FaceDetailer + 4x-UltraSharp upscale (net ~2x resolution). Works with txt2img and faceswap.

Quality Gates (built-in)

The script includes two automatic quality checks on faceswap outputs:

Gate 1 — Size check: ReActor blank outputs when no face is detected (~2KB). Any faceswap output under 10KB automatically retries once. If still blank, exits with FACESWAP_BLANK: error — no garbage delivered.

Gate 2 — Vision QA: If you have Ollama running locally with gemma3:12b, faceswap outputs are checked with vision QA before delivery. PASS → deliver normally. FAIL → file renamed _qa_flagged and still delivered. Add ~10-20s but catches glitchy outputs. Disable by not having Ollama/gemma3 installed (fails open).

Offline Queue

When the bridge is unreachable, requests are automatically queued to ~/.openclaw/faceswap-queue/. A companion daemon (queue_processor.py) polls every 5 minutes and delivers via iMessage when the bridge comes back online.

Tell users: "Got it — the system is offline right now but your request is queued and will be sent automatically when it comes back."

Options Reference

| Flag | Default | Description |

|---|---|---|

| --prompt / -p | — | Text description |

| --filename / -f | required | Output path (use ~/.openclaw/media/outbound/) |

| -i / --input-image | — | Input image (img2img target / faceswap target / portrait) |

| --source-face | — | Source face image (faceswap modes) |

| --faceswap | false | Basic faceswap |

| --faceswap-pipeline | false | Faceswap + cleanup (best quality) |

| --cleanup-strength | 0.40 | Pipeline cleanup denoise strength |

| --targeted-faceswap | false | Swap specific face in multi-face image |

| --target-face-index | 0 | Which face(s) to replace (comma-separated) |

| --liveportrait | false | Expression animation mode |

| --expression-preset | — | smile / surprised / wink / suspicious / derp / angry / sleepy |

| --style-transfer | false | Generate in reference style |

| --restyle | false | Apply reference style to existing photo |

| --style-ref | — | Style reference image |

| --style-weight | 0.85 | Style influence (0.5–1.0) |

| --model / -m | juggernaut | juggernaut, flux, realvis |

| --aspect-ratio / -a | 1:1 | 1:1, 4:5, 9:16, 16:9, 5:4 |

| --strength / -s | 0.6 | img2img denoise strength |

| --seed | -1 | Seed (-1 = random) |

| --enhanced / -e | false | FaceDetailer + 4x upscale |

| --no-media | false | Suppress MEDIA: stdout line (always use this) |

Routing Guide

| User says | Mode |

|---|---|

| "generate an image of..." | txt2img |

| "make this look like..." (with image) | img2img |

| "put [person]'s face on this" | --faceswap-pipeline |

| "swap the second face" | --targeted-faceswap --target-face-index 1 |

| "make him smile / look surprised" | --liveportrait --expression-preset |

| "generate something that looks like this painting" | --style-transfer |

| "make this photo look like a painting" | --restyle |

| "high quality / best quality" | add --enhanced |

Timing Reference

| Mode | Approximate time |

|---|---|

| txt2img (realvis) | ~5 seconds |

| txt2img (juggernaut) | ~5 minutes |

| txt2img (flux) | ~10 minutes |

| faceswap pipeline | ~30 seconds |

| liveportrait | ~7 seconds (21s first run) |

| style transfer / restyle | ~5 minutes |

| +enhanced | +10-30 seconds |