Branching

Exploration is full of tangents. In a chat app, following one derails the thread you care about. On the canvas you branch instead: a branch is a new chat node connected to the one you came from, so it starts with everything the parent knew, and the original thread stays as it was.

Branches sit side by side, so you can follow several ideas from the same point, compare the answers, and see weeks later where each line of thinking split off.

Fork a conversation

• Submit in new branch: type your message, then click the split-arrows button next to Send (tooltip "Submit in new branch") or press ⌘⇧Enter (Ctrl+Shift+Enter on Windows and Linux). A chat titled "Split" appears to the right and runs your prompt right away. The original chat never receives the message.
• Empty branch from the composer: press ⌘B (Ctrl+B on Windows and Linux) while typing. An empty chat titled "New Branch" appears to the right and the view moves to it. Your draft stays where it was.
• Empty branch from the canvas: click a node to make it active, then press ⌘B. The new "New Branch" chat becomes the active node and the view fits to it. On Windows and Linux, double-click the node's right handle instead.

Branch from any node

Every node has a right handle, so a note, web page, document or post can start conversations too. Branch one source three times, give each chat its own question, and the threads never bleed into each other.

• Drag from the right handle and drop on empty canvas. A connected chat appears where you dropped it.
• Double-click the right handle (hovering it shows a "create branch" pill). A connected chat appears to the right and becomes active.

From an Image node or a Scratch pad, both gestures open a picker: Chat, Image or Scratch pad.

Ask about a passage

To dig into one sentence of an answer rather than continue the whole thread, select text in an AI response. A bubble appears with the placeholder "Ask about this… (↵ to expand)".

• Type a question and press Enter. A branch titled with the start of your selection opens and sends Regarding: "…" with the quoted passage, followed by your question.
• Press Enter without typing to ask the AI to expand on the passage.

This is a focused follow-up, not a fork: its first message quotes the passage, so the answer centers on that text. The branch is still connected to the chat, so the AI has the full conversation for reference.

What a branch sees

A branch is joined to its parent by an ordinary connection, so it reads the parent's content (for a chat, its whole conversation) plus everything connected upstream of the parent. Sibling branches can't see each other, and nothing flows back into the parent. See Connections and context.

The connection is live: if you keep talking in the parent after forking, the branch sees those messages the next time you send in it.

Branches made with Submit in new branch, ⌘B, a double-click or the selection bubble also copy the parent chat's setup: model, mode, persona, reasoning level, connectors and context mode. Changing them in the branch leaves the parent alone. A chat dragged out of a handle keeps the model and connectors but starts in Agent mode.

Note: If the parent uses Isolated context, so does the branch, and an isolated chat ignores its incoming connections, including the one from its parent. Switch the parent to Summarized context before branching if the branch should see it.

Compare models

Branches that share a parent answer from the same context, which makes them a fair way to compare models.

1. In the parent's composer, press ⌘B once per model you want to try.
2. In each branch, pick a model from the model dropdown (Choosing a model).
3. Send the same prompt in each. The answers sit side by side.

Working with many branches

• Name them. Branches keep their starting title ("Split", "New Branch" or the quoted passage); a chat that starts untitled is titled automatically after its first reply. Click a title to rename it, or hover it and click Generate Title.
• Color-code a line of thinking with Change Color in the node header.
• Group related branches. A branch of a node inside a group lands in the same group.
• Tidy Up (0) lays the canvas out left to right, each branch to the right of its parent.
• Collapse finished branches to their last exchange.
• Zoom out. Below 30% zoom each node shows its title as a pill; click one to fly back to it.

More in Organizing the canvas and Navigating the canvas.