Strategic Branches

Core Concept

Sandbox environments for exploring what-if decision chains before committing to your main decision graph.

What are Strategic Branches?

Strategic Branches are isolated sandboxes where you can explore hypothetical decision chains without affecting your live decision graph. Think of them like Git branches but for architectural decisions.

Use branches to model "what if" scenarios: What if we migrate to Kubernetes? What if we switch to a microservices architecture? You can create entire decision trees, see how they interact with existing decisions, and then choose to merge or discard them.

Ghost Nodes

Decisions created in a branch appear as "ghost nodes" on the graph. They have distinct visual styling:

Dashed borders - indicates the decision is not yet committed
Branch badge - shows which branch the decision belongs to
Branch-colored indicators - color-coded to match the branch

Ghost nodes can have relationships with both other ghost nodes and existing live decisions. This lets you see how proposed changes would interact with your current architecture.

Ghost nodes are only visible when viewing that branch. Switch back to Main to see your committed decisions without branch noise.

Decision Provenance

When you merge a branch, Arbtr preserves the provenance of each decision. You can always trace back which branch introduced a decision, providing a "git blame" style audit trail for your architecture.

This is especially valuable when reviewing historical decisions or understanding why certain architectural choices were made as a group.

Using the Branch Switcher

Open the graph view - Navigate to your team's graph page
Click the branch dropdown - Located in the graph toolbar, shows "Main" by default
Create or select a branch - Choose an existing branch or create a new one
Create decisions - Double-click the canvas to quick-create decisions in the current branch

Merging Branches

When you're ready to commit your branch decisions to the main graph, use the merge flow:

Flat Merge

Each decision becomes an individual node on the main graph. Best for small branches with distinct, standalone decisions.

Summary Merge

AI generates a summary decision that represents the entire branch. The summary appears as a distinctive "stacked card" node. Best for large branches with many interconnected decisions.

tip

Use the Diff View to preview what will change before merging. Click the "Review" button in the branch indicator bar to compare your branch against main.

Conflict Detection

Arbtr automatically detects potential conflicts between branch decisions and existing live decisions. When you create a relationship that would create a conflict, you'll see a warning.

Conflicts don't prevent merging, but they're flagged so you can address them intentionally rather than accidentally.

Branch Lifecycle

Active

Branch is in progress. You can add decisions, create relationships, and edit branch metadata.

Merged

Branch decisions have been committed to main. The branch is preserved for historical reference.

Archived

Branch was abandoned. Optionally includes a reason explaining why the branch was not merged.

Visual Language

Arbtr uses consistent visual language to distinguish committed vs proposed:

Solid lines = Committed (on main)
Dashed lines = Proposed (in a branch)

This applies to both node borders and relationship edges, making it immediately clear what's real vs what's being explored.

Resources

Features

Command Palette