Keep the good answer. Try another direction.
The problem
Changing an earlier instruction can erase the path that produced a useful answer.
An explanatory exhibit
One brief, two directions
Local explanatory exhibit · invented records · no live service or agent call
light goes
a long way.Fictional reference · CSS illustration
Shared ancestor / Original brief
A quiet poster for a library evening.
Viewing quiet blue. Both revisions retain the original brief and reference.
No preferred direction chosen.
Inspect the consequence
Original brief
A quiet library poster
One shared brief remains the ancestor of both revisions.
Warmer revision
Terracotta, evening light
A new direction is a sibling; it does not replace the original.
What this makes possible
Editing a message forks the conversation. Branch navigation, a tree, fork markers and side-by-side comparison keep alternatives connected to their shared history.
Source information sheet
Evidence, implementation & history Implementation inspected
What I checked
Source and release record inspected. This page keeps a small invented illustration; the linked Branch Lab adds an actual isolated PanelForge run with fictional data, seeded answers and an explicitly unreleased comparison fix.
Release anchor: web-v5.1.0.
Research cut: 14 October 2026. Source areas below are from panel-forge. Private conversation references are retained in the research ledger and are not published here.
Implementation decisions
Editing a message forks the conversation. Branch navigation, a tree, fork markers and side-by-side comparison keep alternatives connected to their shared history.
Treat a revision as a new branch with a visible parent, not an overwrite; let the user mark a preferred branch.
A path through the feature
- The consequence
Treat a revision as a new branch with a visible parent, not an overwrite; let the user mark a preferred branch.
Source areas
resources/js/components/chat/ChatBranchNavigator.vueresources/js/components/chat/ChatBranchTreeModal.vueresources/js/components/chat/ChatSplitView.vueresources/js/composables/useBranchNavigation.tsapp/Models/Conversation.php
The small explanatory exhibit uses invented records to describe the mechanism. Separate recordings and working examples carry their own evidence notes.
Recorded history
Dates describe the researched record, rather than today’s deployment.
web-v5.1.0