the starter guide · step 7 of 13
branch your memory
try a different direction without touching the one you have, compare the two, and keep what wins.
sometimes you want to think through an alternative without losing what you have. a cheaper plan, a different trip, a rewrite you might throw away. in innernet you branch: a copy of the whole memory where you can change anything, while the original stays exactly as it was.
people who write code know branches from git. you don't need to. there are only four ideas.
the four ideas
- trunk is the main memory, the one every tool reads by default.
- a branch is a full copy, made at a moment, that you change freely. trunk doesn't see those changes.
- the difference is what the branch changed since you made it, side by side with trunk.
- merging brings the branch's changes into trunk. parking sets the branch aside, untouched, for later.
do it, in a chat
branching is done by talking to your ai. say it in plain words:
- make the branch. branch lisbon-app as "usage-pricing".
- work on it. on the usage-pricing branch, rewrite the pricing page as usage-based: a small monthly base, then per booking. anything you ask to change "on the branch" changes there only.
- compare. show me what usage-pricing changed compared to trunk.
- decide. merge usage-pricing or park usage-pricing for now.
trunk · what everyone reads
pricing
a flat monthly seat per guesthouse.
branch · usage-pricing
pricing
a small base, then per booking.
- fork: "branch lisbon-app as usage-pricing". trunk is untouched.
- diff: what the branch changed since the fork, and what trunk changed too.
- merge: only the branch’s changes land. a conflict stays as trunk has it until you settle it.
what the comparison tells you
each page the branch touched comes back as added, modified or removed. one more word matters: conflict. it means trunk changed that same page too, differently, while you were on the branch. innernet points it out rather than picking a winner.
how merging is careful
when you merge:
- only what the branch changed is brought across.
- anything trunk learned while you were away is never overwritten.
- a page with a conflict stays as trunk has it, and is listed. settle it (tell your ai which version you want, or write the page together), then merge again.
a merge is recorded like any other change, so you can always see when it happened.
parking
not ready to decide? park usage-pricing. the branch is set aside with everything intact. unpark it whenever you like. nothing on a parked branch is ever lost.
and history, on trunk
trunk keeps one truth. when something changes there, the page says what's true now, and a dated line at its foot says what it used to be:
pricing
usage-based: a small monthly base, then per booking. deposits go through stripe, held until check-in.
branches are for holding two truths on purpose. history is for remembering how you got to the one you have.
the full model, with every tool and endpoint, is branches & history in the docs.
next: see what innernet knows about you.
the starter guide, every step
one memory, every ai tool.
innernet is memory your ai tools read live: every project, every decision, every skill, in one place, connected once. this guide is one of the parts worth learning; the rest you'll pick up by using it.