Library & composites

Reuse is first-class in Brut. A pipeline you've perfected shouldn't be rebuilt by hand on the next job — collapse it, save it, drop it in anywhere.

#Groups

Select two or more nodes and press Ctrl+G (or Group in the floating selection bar, or the rail's Organize section) to wrap them in a labeled frame. A group is purely visual — it moves as a unit and keeps things tidy. ✕ on the frame ungroups.

Select a group to style its identity: six frame colors (dashed line + background wash) and a label size up to genuinely gigantic — big enough to read the group's name zoomed all the way out.

Groups also adopt: drop a node inside a group's area (or add one there from the Tab menu) and it joins the group automatically — drag it out and it leaves. No re-grouping ceremony.

#Composites

A composite is a subgraph collapsed into a single node (select nodes → 📦 Collapse to composite). Cut wires become labeled ports; the inner nodes are still real (just hidden), so caching, pins and ledger history keep working inside the composite exactly as outside.

• Open / Close — ⤢ opens a composite into a live frame you can edit inside, then ⇱ packs it back up, exactly where it was, with the same ports (new outside wires you made while it was open become new ports). Only nodes that are members of the frame close into it — a node you add or drag inside joins automatically; a node that merely overlaps the frame's area stays out.
• Run — ▶ on a composite runs its whole inside plus everything upstream.
• Explode — 💥 permanently dissolves it back into loose nodes.

Composites are how the four-agent cinema crew becomes one droppable "Cinema Team" node.

#The global library

Composites, whole-graph templates and presets can be saved to a global library — deliberately cross-project, so the same shelf appears on every project.

• Save a composite — 💾 Save to library on the composite node. Same name = a new version (everything is versioned; any past version is retrievable).
• Save a graph as a template — File ▾ → Save graph as template….
• Save a preset — 💾 on the node that owns the settings: the Prompt node and Multi-Shot notes save prompt presets (reusable brief texts), the Upscale Image node saves upscaling presets (model + dials).
• Browse — File ▾ → Browse library…, or find saved composites right in the Tab add-node menu under Library. Dropping one in gives it fresh ids (separate caches, no collisions). The Library panel also lists every preset, grouped by what it belongs to — presets are applied from their node, and deleted here.

Library items carry an optional category (a shelf label you pick on save) and hold sanitized recipes only — prompts, models and wiring. No images, no caches, no keys are ever written into a library item, so they're safe to share.

Some items ship with Brut — like the Cinema Crew template (the whole cinema pipeline, pre-wired) and the Character Lab composite: drop it into any graph, wire a full-body character image in, and it produces an expression grid, a clean head-to-toe studio portrait (clothes kept — describe an outfit in the stage prompt to re-dress instead), and a clean 4-view turnaround sheet — open (⤢) it to edit the three stage prompts, and pick your image models inside (a tip in the block: GPT Image 2 is the safe pick for people, since Gemini can silently refuse images resembling real persons). Built-ins can't be deleted; saving your own item under the same name shadows the shipped one.

#Templates vs composites

• A composite is a node — a reusable building block you drop into an existing graph.
• A template is a whole graph — a starting point for a new job, opened fresh from the library.