Heads up: statuses are automated heuristics from commit dates, registry metadata and issue titles. "Stale" can mean "finished and stable"; "Error spike" means error-titled issues are unusually high for that pack lately — worth checking recent issues, not a verdict that it is broken. Always check the repo.

Methodology

Pack list: Comfy Registry API (api.comfy.org/nodes, 6101 packs) cross-checked with ComfyUI-Manager custom-node-list.json (6036 entries). Top 300 by registry downloads with a GitHub repo.
Stars & downloads: registry. Last commit: git ls-remote + shallow treeless fetch of default branch and main/master (newest wins). pyproject.toml: raw.githubusercontent.com, parsed per the registry spec ([tool.comfy] requires-comfyui).
Issues: GitHub REST API (gh-authenticated), cached and rotated oldest-first each run. Error issues = open issue titles matching error/broken/fail/crash/traceback/etc.
Star velocity (idea from Reddit user u/Luke2642, who built the ComfyUI New Node Finder): stars gained over the last 30 days, from nightly GitHub stargazer-count snapshots (GraphQL) starting 2026-10-19. Until a full 30-day window exists the gain is over the days available. Historical backfill wasn't possible: GitHub's list-stargazers API no longer returns other people's repos.
Active forks (idea from Reddit user u/bonalex01): for Stale and Quiet packs, up to 200 forks (newest + most-starred) are listed; forks pushed after upstream's last commit are compared against upstream's default branch, and those ahead with newer commits are ranked by commits ahead (capped at 50) ×2 + recency + 3×log2(1+stars). Automatic suggestions, not endorsements. Refreshed weekly on a rotating subset.
Categories: function and model-family tags from keyword rules over the pack name, registry description, GitHub topics and README (README mentions need repeated hits), plus manual overrides for misfires. Packs can have several tags; packs with no model-specific mentions are "Generic / any".
Status: Stale / abandoned = repo gone, or no commit >365 days. Quiet (note on Active packs) = no commit in 6–12 months. Error spike = worth checking recent issues (not a verdict). All three must hold: (1) ≥3 error-titled issues (open or closed, PRs excluded) opened in the last 30 days; (2) that is ≥2× the pack's own average 30-day rate over the prior 180 days (baseline floored at 1/month); (3) ≥0.5 such issues per 100K registry downloads in those 30 days (about 3× the median monthly rate across tracked packs), so big packs aren't penalized for volume. Error-titled = title matches error/broken/fail/crash/exception/traceback/not working/incompatible etc. Deprecated or non-active registry entries are shown as notes, not a status. Active = otherwise. Heuristic only — a stable "finished" pack may be flagged stale.