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Control Center

Branch a conversation

This guide shows you how to go back to an earlier point in a conversation and take it somewhere else — while keeping the path you left.

The one thing worth knowing

Section titled “The one thing worth knowing”

Branching writes nothing. A conversation is a tree of messages with a pointer at the tip, and going back moves the pointer. Nothing is deleted, nothing is hidden, and switching back is another pointer move.

That is why editing a prompt and re-running is safe here: the answer you were comparing against is still there.

See the branches

Section titled “See the branches”
/tree

The navigator lists every message, indented at each fork, with the current path marked On this branch. A conversation that never forked renders as the flat list it always was — the navigator costs nothing to look at until there is something to navigate.

Each row offers two actions.

Action Effect
Continue from here Moves the pointer. Your next message continues from that message.
Fork into a new conversation Copies the path up to that message into a new conversation.

Branch: try a different approach

Section titled “Branch: try a different approach”
  1. /tree
  2. Find the message you want to start again from — usually the last one you were happy with.
  3. Continue from here.
  4. Type the new prompt.

The old continuation is still in the tree; /tree will now show two paths from that point, and you can switch between them freely.

Fork: take it somewhere else

Section titled “Fork: take it somewhere else”

Forking copies the path into a new conversation in the same space. Use it when the two directions are going to keep diverging and you want them side by side rather than switching.

The copy has fresh message ids. Two conversations sharing rows would show each other’s later messages, which is exactly what a fork is supposed to prevent.

Revert versus branch

Section titled “Revert versus branch”

They are different tools and the difference matters.

Revert Branch
The later messages Hidden from the transcript Still visible in /tree
The worktree Rolled back to that turn’s snapshot Untouched
Undo unrevert restores the batch Move the pointer back

Revert is what you want when the agent changed files you want back. Branch is what you want when the conversation went the wrong way but the files are fine.

Reverting also moves the branch tip, so your next message continues from the right place rather than from a tail nobody can see any more.

Take it out of the app

Section titled “Take it out of the app”

/export

Section titled “/export”

Writes a self-contained HTML file: the whole conversation with collapsible tool cards showing what each call was given and what it returned. No stylesheet, no script, no image host — it works from a USB stick and it works in five years.

  • Desktop: Documents/ControlCenter/exports/, timestamped so a second export does not overwrite the first.
  • Web: a browser download.

/dump

Section titled “/dump”

Copies the transcript to the clipboard as markdown, with tool calls in collapsible blocks. This is the one to paste into an issue.

Reasoning is deliberately left out: it is the model’s scratch space, and a bug report is read by a person.

Section titled “Related”