Branch pages: one note, many pages

Every note eventually meets the same problem: it is doing two jobs at once. The meeting note also contains the decisions. The project hub also contains the details of each workstream. The answer is usually not a second note somewhere else — it is a page that belongs to the first one.

What a branch is

From the note header you can create a branch of the note you are looking at. A branch is a child page that lives at yournote/branchname — the parent’s address with a name appended. If your note is /q3-planning, a branch called decisions lives at /q3-planning/decisions.

A new branch starts empty, and that is the point. The parent and the branch are separate pages with independent content: you are not copying the parent or moving part of it. The parent keeps doing its job, and the branch starts doing a new one.

Creating your first branch

1. Open the note that needs a child page.
2. Use the branch control in the note header and give the branch a name.
3. You land on the new page at yournote/branchname, empty and ready to write.
4. The branch address is predictable, so linking back to the parent — or sharing the branch — is a matter of typing or pasting it.

The name is yours: decisions, homework, log, france-trip. The address is assembled from the parent’s address, which is why branches read naturally when shared.

One level deep, on purpose

Branches go one level deep. A branch is a parent and a child address of exactly two segments — yournote/branchname — and there are no branches of branches. That constraint keeps every address unambiguous, and in practice one level is where the useful shapes live: a hub with subpages, not a document tree.

Renaming, trashing, restoring

• Renaming the parent keeps branch links working. If the parent’s URL changes, the branches move with it, and old links redirect to their new homes. Tidying a slug does not break anything.
• Trashing the parent takes its branches with it. The whole family goes to the trash together, so tidying one thing never strands its children in the live workspace.
• Restoring the parent brings the branches back. The same cascade runs in reverse, so a mistaken trash is one click to undo, children included.

Three shapes this fits

• Meeting note plus decisions page. The messy running notes stay on the parent; the decisions page stays clean enough to send to someone who missed the meeting.
• Project hub plus per-topic subpages. The parent is the front door; each workstream gets its own address without inventing a new folder structure.
• Class notes plus homework page. The lecture notes live where they happened; the homework has its own page to hand in from.

The test is simple: if a note is doing two jobs, give one of the jobs an address. A branch is that address, already attached to the page it came from.