nrepo branch

nrepo branch <id> [options]

Creates a new idea from an existing one, recording the original as its parent. Use it to explore an alternative without editing — or losing — the version you already have.

Options

Flag	Type	Default	Description
`--title <title>`	string	The original’s title	Title for the variant.
`--body <body>`	string	The original’s body	Body for the variant.
`--json`	boolean	`false`	Output the new idea as JSON.
`--human`	boolean	—	Force human-readable output. Wins over `--json`.

What the new idea inherits

Field	Value on the branch
Title	The original’s, unless `--title` is given
Body	The original’s, unless `--body` is given
Tags	Copied from the original
Status	Always `captured` — never the original’s status
Source	`cli`, whatever the original’s source was
Parent	The original, recorded in `parent_id`

Nothing is copied back the other way, and the original is not modified.

Output

nrepo branch 391 --title "Dark mode — Tailwind approach"

✓ Branched from #391 as #55
#55 captured   ⬡ Dark mode — Tailwind approach [ui, frontend]

  Processing: embeddings, dedup, and auto-tagging queued

  Compare with: nrepo diff 391 508

The parent relation is created a moment later

Setting parent_id is synchronous, but the visible parent relation between the two ideas is created by the background queue that also handles embedding and dedup. For a second or two after branching, nrepo links on the new idea shows nothing:

nrepo branch 391 --json | jq -r .id     # 508
nrepo links 508                          # "No links" — the queue has not run yet
sleep 3
nrepo links 508                          # Child of ← #42

The relation is recorded as system-created, so it appears in the mind map styled differently from relations you draw by hand. nrepo diff 508 works immediately either way, because it reads parent_id directly.

Next Steps

nrepo diff Compare the variant against the idea it came from.

nrepo merge Fold the winning variant back into the original.

nrepo link Add relations by hand when parent is not the right shape.

Idea Relations What parent means alongside the other relation types.