Nodes

Assign

Curation is a decision, not a file operation. When you put a photo in a collection you are saying something about it — that it belongs with these others, that it is ready to publish — and nothing about where the photo lives on disk.

This node writes that decision. It adds an asset to a collection or a library, and it does not move, copy, rename or delete anything.

It runs no model and needs nothing installed alongside it.

Kind

assign

Applies to

Any asset the system already knows about

Input ports

media — the asset to file

Output ports

assigned (Boolean), target (String)

Requirements

A connection to the server. No model, no sidecar, no GPU

Persists to

Collection or library membership

It never touches the file

This is worth stating plainly, because the node next to it in the palette does exactly the opposite. Move relocates bytes. This one writes a single row saying "this asset belongs to that collection" and leaves the file exactly where it was, byte for byte.

They are two separate nodes for that reason. A single node that sometimes filed a photo and sometimes relocated 40 GB of video, depending on a setting, would be one nobody could reason about — and the two have nothing in common when they go wrong.

Collections and libraries

A collection is a grouping you make: a shortlist, a shoot, a set ready for review. An asset can be in as many as you like.

A library is where material was brought in. Adding an asset to one here records that it belongs there — it does not move the file into the library’s storage. If that is what you want, use Move with a library target.

Settings

The Assign settings panel: Target, Collection Name, On Missing and 4 more settings
Figure 1. The node’s settings in the pipeline editor
Setting Default What it does

Target

Collection

Collection or library

Collection

The collection, given either directly or by name. Set one or the other, not both

Library

The library, when the target is a library

If it does not exist

Fail

Fail the step, create it, or skip the item

Dry run

Off

Report what would be filed and write nothing

If it does not exist defaults to failing on purpose. A collection name that does not resolve is almost always a typo, and quietly doing nothing for an entire run is how a curation pipeline appears to work while producing an empty set.

Choosing create requires the pipeline’s account to be allowed to create collections. If it is not, the step fails and says so, rather than blaming the data.

Filing what a rule or a person decided

The node earns its place at the end of a routing chain.

  1. Something decides — a person rating in the review screen, a tag, or a model’s verdict.

  2. A Filter node routes on that decision.

  3. This node files the result.

For example: filter by rating, take the >=8 bucket, and assign it to a Selects collection. Or filter by tag, take hero, and assign it to the collection your website publishes from.

Adding the same asset twice is harmless. Membership is a set, so a second run reports assigned as false and writes nothing — which means you can re-run a pipeline over a library you have already curated without duplicating anything.

Seeing it run

Turn on Debug Mode and every node keeps what it produced, on the card itself. Below is a real run of this node, filing a photograph into a Selects collection.

The assign node after a run, with the values it emitted on each port

The strip on the card lists what each output port carried — assigned, target. assigned is true because this was the first time that photograph went into that collection; a second run over the same asset reports false and writes nothing. target is the collection itself, which is what you wire onwards if a later node needs to know where the asset was filed.

Good to know

  • Assets the system has not seen yet are skipped. A membership cannot exist without the asset record, so there is nothing to write.

  • Removing an asset from a collection is not something this node does. That is a review decision, made in the collection screen.

  • Deleting a collection removes its memberships and leaves every asset alone. Deleting a library is deliberately refused while assets still belong to it.

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