interactive-story/planning/DECISIONS/005-branch-preserving-history.md

ADR 005 — Branch-Preserving Story History

Status: Accepted in principle; implementation pending Phase 0

Decision

Returning to an earlier story point should preserve abandoned future history as another branch rather than destructively erasing it.

Context

The user must be able to recover from unwanted story developments and explore alternatives while retaining prior work.

Alternatives Considered

• destructive undo,
• overwrite-in-place editing,
• complete copy of campaigns for every retry,
• branch-preserving turn graph.

Reason

A branch-preserving history provides recovery, experimentation, and auditability without unnecessary campaign duplication.

Consequences

• turn identity/parentage must be first-class,
• state restore must be branch-aware,
• retry/edit semantics must be explicitly defined,
• the selected candidate repository must either support this or be adaptable to it.