Branch, review & merge

This guide walks you through the branch workflow: create a branch, design on it in isolation, review the spatial diff, and merge the result back to Main. You need a project open. Branching is how you explore alternatives — different cabinet placements, different pump sizes, different routes — without overwriting your working design or accumulating untracked copies.

Branches mirror git. They have history, diffs, and merges, and Main is the one canonical branch every project carries. Promoting a design to baseline is a merge into Main.

Steps

1. Create a branch. Fork from any commit; the new branch starts identical to its parent. Give it a name that says what you are exploring.

Create a branch called denser-cabinets from the current Main and switch to it.

1. Design in isolation. Jax operates on the active branch, so everything you do now lands on the branch, not Main. Iterate freely — this is a safe sandbox.

On this branch, raise the per-cabinet cap to 200 parcels and re-solve the placement.

1. Commit as you reach milestones. A commit snapshots the branch state with a message, author, and timestamp. Commit at points you might want to return to.

Commit this with the message "denser layout, 200-parcel cap".

1. Review the diff. Compare the branch to Main. Diffs are spatial — added, modified, and removed features render directly on the Globe with a side-by-side toggle — so you can see exactly what changed and where.

Diff this branch against Main and show me what changed on the Globe.

1. Resolve any conflicts. When two branches touched the same features, conflicts surface as Jax-mediated review prompts. For each conflicting hunk you accept, reject, or rewrite.

1. Merge to Main. Once the alternative proves out, merge it into Main with the approve authority. The rest of your branches stay queryable with full provenance — archive the ones you did not pick.

Merge denser-cabinets into Main and archive the other two options.

Tips

• Open competing options as separate branches and compare them on the Globe before committing to one.
• Ask Jax to "redo this on a new branch" and it will fork, switch, and replay the work for you.
• Use time-travel — checking out any commit as a read-only view — for design reviews and audits.
• Keep the active working set small; archived branches do not count against your editing surfaces, so archive freely.

Where to go next

• Read the full model in Branches.
• Pair branching with Run an optimization to compare solver outputs.
• Automate a recurring fork-and-replan in Build an automation.