Forking conversations
Branch a conversation from any reply and keep both timelines.
Forking copies a conversation up to a chosen reply and opens the copy as a separate chat. The original is untouched and keeps going; the branch goes wherever you take it. Use it when you want to see how else a scene could have played out without losing the version you already have.
Making a fork
Reveal the message toolbar
Hover the character's message on desktop, or tap it on a touch device.
More → Fork from here
Forking is offered on the character's messages only — you cannot branch from one of your own. Signing in is required.
Confirm
The Fork Conversation dialog explains what will happen; Fork Chat creates the branch and opens it.
There is no name field. The branch is titled after its parent with (Fork) appended, or Forked Chat if the original had no title. Rename it afterwards from your chat list — see Managing conversations.
What the branch inherits
A fork is a real copy, not a pointer into the original.
| Copied | Detail |
|---|---|
| Messages up to the fork point | Including the alternative replies behind the variant switcher, re-keyed so later regenerations in one branch never appear in the other |
| Images | Physically duplicated in storage, so deleting either chat cannot break the other's pictures |
| Conversation summaries | Every summary whose range fits inside the copy, with its consolidation lineage intact |
| Installed plugins | With their configuration, enabled state and order |
| The setup | Scenario, moment, persona, instant-chat mode and chat language |
| The cast | The roster as it stood at the fork point — members who joined later are not in the branch |
Nothing after the fork point comes across. You can fork a fork.
Forking does not branch memory. Saved memories belong to you and the character, not to a chat, so both timelines read and write the same store — what a character learns in the branch is immediately known in the original, and in every other chat with that character. Only the conversation summaries are per-chat and genuinely copied. See How memory works.
Finding your branches
Open your chat list, use a conversation's ⋯ menu and choose Timeline. The Chat Timeline dialog lists every conversation you have had with that character — counted as {total} conversations, {forks} forks — marking which rows are forks and which one you are in.
There is no branch switcher in the chat header, and no way to mark a branch as the canonical one. Branches are ordinary conversations: they appear in your chat list, they can be renamed, archived, exported and deleted individually.
Cost
Forking itself is free, and a message costs the same in a branch as it does anywhere else. What a fork inherits is the context: the summary chain comes across intact, so a branch of a 500-message conversation starts with the same per-turn context — and the same per-message price — as the conversation it came from.
Limits
- Assistant messages only.
- Signing in is required.
- You cannot fork a conversation whose character has since been deleted.
Related
- How memory works — what is shared across branches and what is not
- Managing conversations — renaming, archiving and deleting branches
- Scenarios — a fork keeps its parent's scenario and cannot change it
- Group chats — how a fork rewinds the cast