Pin to panel
Pin a whole node or a single parameter to the Parameters panel and drive it live.
As a graph grows, the controls you perform with get buried. Pinning lifts them out: a pinned node or parameter appears in the Parameters panel whatever node is selected.
Pinning a node or a parameter
Right-click a node in the graph and choose Pin to Panel, and the whole node lands in the panel as a titled block, its name in the family colour, followed by every visible control. Unpin from Panel takes it back out.
To pin a single control, hold Alt and drag from that parameter's label on the node body onto the panel. The drag arms after a few pixels and a ghost card follows the cursor; a pinned parameter appears as a single row.
Pin a single parameter when one knob is all a performance needs, say the radius of a Circle or the count on a Points node. Pin the whole node while several controls are still being dialled in.
Organising with folders
Click the folder button at the bottom of the panel to make a new folder. Right-click a pinned parameter and pick the folder from the list of → Folder entries to file it there, or Remove from Folder to pull it back out. Click a folder's header to collapse or expand it.
Pins are grouped by context as well. The main graph and each subgraph you have pinned from get their own section, so controls from different parts of a project never mix.
Drag pins up and down to reorder them. The Filter... box at the top narrows the whole panel as you type.
The hotbar
The hotbar is a strip across the top of the panel carrying one chip per pin that has a key. Press the key to fire that pin, including mid-performance with your hands on the keyboard. Ten digits are bound: 1 to 9, and 0 for the tenth slot.
Right-click a pin and choose Add to hotbar to give it the next free number.
Set hotbar key… binds a specific key. The panel shows a 'Press a key' banner and takes the next keystroke.
Clicking a hotbar chip does the same as pressing its key.
Remove from hotbar frees the slot.
Shiftplus the digit steps a value pin the other way. On a pin that fires or selects, it does the same as the bare digit.
A whole-node pin lights its slot when that node is selected, so the hotbar doubles as a way to jump between key nodes.
Auto-assignment takes the lowest free digit from 1 to 9, skipping any a live Keyboard node is watching. Slot 1 is not reserved; the Select tool simply tends to hold it. Slot 10 is never assigned automatically, and deleting a pin leaves its digit empty rather than renumbering the rest.
Tool nodes you place by drawing in the viewport, such as Stamp, claim a hotbar slot automatically when added. The collapsible Auto-add tools to hotbar section near the bottom of the panel sets which types do this, and a node's right-click menu turns it off for that one node.
The other pin: pinning an output to the Data Viewer
There is a second thing called pinning, and it is not this one. Right-click a node's output socket and the menu offers Pin to Data Viewer, which parks that output in the Data Viewer so you can keep reading its table while you work elsewhere in the graph. Several outputs can be pinned at once and they show as slots in the order you pinned them. Unpin from Data Viewer is the same menu item once a socket is pinned.
Those pins are kept alongside the project and come back when it reopens, separately from the parameter pins on this page. Deleting a node clears its pins from both.
The distinction is worth holding on to: pinning a parameter gives you something to drive, and pinning an output gives you something to read.
Per-pin actions
Right-clicking a pinned parameter adds more actions:
Copy Value and Paste Value move a setting from one control to a matching one.
Reset to Default snaps a parameter back to its starting value.
Rename Label gives a pin a name other than the raw parameter name.
Unpin removes it from the panel and leaves the node untouched.
The bottom toolbar carries Clear All. Selecting pins (click, or shift-click to add more) lets you Delete several at once.
A pinned control is the same control as the one on the node. Animate it, keyframe it, or drive it with an Parameter expressions as you would anywhere else. See Keyframing and Recording live input for performing with them.