Free Local Image Generation with Z-Image-Turbo and ComfyUI

Melvin Vivas · X post · 2026-03-18 · Open on X

Topics: AI Dev Tools & Productivity, Portfolio Projects · Level: intermediate

Summary

The creator gets free, unlimited AI image generation by running the Z-Image-Turbo model locally in ComfyUI on an RTX 3090 GPU. Claude Code helped come up with prompt ideas.

Key points

• Running image models locally removes per-image API costs.
• Z-Image-Turbo runs in ComfyUI on one consumer RTX 3090 (24 GB VRAM).
• A coding agent such as Claude Code can generate prompt ideas for the image model.

Resources mentioned

• Z-Image-Turbo · tool · huggingface.co · free
  An open image-generation model that can run on local hardware.
  Also in: Free Local Image Generation: ComfyUI App Mode + LM Studio + Gemma (Melvin Vivas on X · notes), Local Prompt-to-Image Pipeline: ComfyUI + LM Studio Gemma + Z-Image Turbo (Melvin Vivas on X · notes), Free Local Portraits with Z-Image-Turbo in ComfyUI (Melvin Vivas on X · notes), Local Image Generation Pipeline Built with Claude Code (Melvin Vivas on X · notes)
• ComfyUI · tool · x.com · free
  The official X account for ComfyUI, the node-based tool for generative AI workflows, which announces things like ComfyUI Agent.
  Also in: ComfyUI Agent: early access announcement (Melvin Vivas on X · notes), Comfy Router: One API for Image, Video, 3D and Audio Model Providers (Melvin Vivas on X · notes), Generating AI Video Locally with MiniMax H3 in ComfyUI on an RTX 3090 (Melvin Vivas on X · notes), Running MiniMax M3 Locally in ComfyUI on an RTX 3090 (Melvin Vivas on X · notes) and 23 more
• Claude Code · tool · code.claude.com · paid · recommended by both Bashiri Smith & Melvin Vivas
  Build agents and pipelines from the terminal; the guide's main agentic coding tool.
  Also in: Create Claude Code Plugins with /plugin-authoring (Melvin Vivas on X · notes), Claude Code mods: customize behavior and UI with plugins (Melvin Vivas on X · notes), AI Engineer Roadmap Overview: From ML Foundations to RAG, Agents & Ops (Bashiri Smith on Facebook · notes), SkillsBento: Free Plugin Marketplace for Codex and Claude Code (Melvin Vivas on X · notes) and 101 more

Try this

• Run Z-Image-Turbo locally in ComfyUI if you have a GPU with enough VRAM.
• Set up a local image-generation workflow in ComfyUI with Z-Image-Turbo, using an LLM to write prompts.