ijzereen/branch-of-thought

Branch of Thought is a Google Chrome browser extension that helps you navigate complex conversations in Claude and ChatGPT. When you edit a message in either of those AI chat tools, the old version of the conversation does not disappear, it branches off into a separate thread. The standard interface buries these alternative branches behind a small arrow indicator that is easy to miss. This extension draws all of the branches as a visual graph in a side panel so you can see the full shape of your conversation at a glance. The graph shows each message as a node, and branching points where you edited and took the conversation in a different direction appear as forks. Clicking any node lets you read that version of the message in full. You can also reroute the highlighted path through any node, which means you can jump back to a branch you abandoned earlier and continue from there. Nodes can be dragged to rearrange the layout, and the positions are saved per conversation so things stay organized. There is an optional feature that adds short one-line summaries to each node. Turning it on requires an Anthropic API key. The extension uses Claude Haiku (a small, low-cost AI model) to generate these summaries, caches them in your browser so each message is summarized only once, and keeps everything local to your machine. The README estimates the cost as a few cents on first open and free after that. Privacy is kept simple: nothing leaves your computer unless you turn on the Haiku titles feature. The extension reads conversation data that your browser already fetched from Claude or ChatGPT and builds the graph entirely on your machine. No servers are involved and no usage analytics are collected. The extension is not available in the Chrome Web Store and must be installed manually by loading it as an unpacked extension through Chrome's developer mode. Installation takes about 60 seconds. It supports export to interactive HTML, PNG, or SVG if you want to save a snapshot of a conversation's structure. The MIT license means you can modify and share it freely.