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for builders · step 2 of 3

branch your memory

try a different direction without touching the one you have, compare the two, and keep what wins.

/community/guides/starter-branch-your-memory
2 of 3
step 1 of 33 minyour repo in innernetfor anyone who writes code. one command gives a repo its own memory, every commit keeps it current, and a teammate who clones it gets it too.
step 2 of 32 minbranch your memorytry a different direction without touching the one you have, compare the two, and keep what wins.
step 3 of 35 mingive your agent a memoryfor anyone building an agent, even if you have never wired a memory before. make it in connections, paste one block into the ai you code with, and it remembers. what it learns about you waits for your yes.

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:

  1. 1make the branch. branch lisbon-app as "usage-pricing".
  2. 2work 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.
  3. 3compare. show me what usage-pricing changed compared to trunk.
  4. 4decide. merge usage-pricing or park usage-pricing for now.
the whole branch, said out loud: fork, change, compare.
the whole branch, said out loud: fork, change, compare.
trunk on the left, the branch on the right, and what the comparison says.
trunk on the left, the branch on the right, and what the comparison says.

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:

one truth on trunk. the history remembers the rest.
one truth on trunk. the history remembers the rest.

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.

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