Suggestion: Sidebar & Menu Navigation: Introduce Expandable Tree for Chat Edits/Branches

[admdanielspalma]

LibreChat’s message editing feature is very useful. It allows users to edit any message and follow a new path in the conversation. This opens up great potential for exploring alternative ideas, tones or outcomes in a single chat.

However, in daily use, this feature becomes hard to manage... especially when you branch off at multiple points or want to return to a specific fork later.

Problem

Currently:

• There is no clear structure for identifying or managing branches.
• If you edit at message 5, then again at message 9, and again at 13... the whole chat becomes hard to follow.
• All variations stay in a flat timeline, making it easy to get lost or miss key branches.
• Navigating back to a specific turning point to continue a different idea is inefficient.

Suggested Solution

Introduce a tree-like structure for conversations:

• Let any message become the start of a new sub-chat, directly from the UI, with an option like "New sub chat from here...".

• The new sub-chat should behave like a child of the original conversation, inheriting everything above that point as context.

• In the menu (left sidebar), these sub-chats could be visually nested like:

  Chat 1
  ├── Variation A (original flow)
  │   └── Idea A1
  └── Variation B (from message 5)
      └── Idea B1 (from message 7)
  

• This makes it clear where a conversation diverged and helps the user return to or expand from any point easily.

Optional UI Behavior

• Allow users to mark any message as a branching point, and have all sub-chats derived from it grouped visually under it.
• In the sidebar, this could work like folders or expandable threads... making it more natural to navigate multiple variations.
• Users could choose to pin or unpin sub-chats from the sidebar for a cleaner workspace.

Benefits

• Easier to manage and explore complex conversations.
• More control over context inheritance.
• A more natural way to organize brainstorming, long workflows or version testing.

Final note

This would turn one of LibreChat’s strongest features into a much more usable and powerful tool. It aligns with how people actually work... testing ideas, exploring variations and needing a clear way to return and build on them later.

Thanks for the amazing work on this project. LibreChat already offers a lot of flexibility... this would unlock even more.

[danny-avila]

Thanks for the excellent write-up.

Have you used the conversation forking feature? You can achieve a higher level of organization by that, and then bookmarking as needed.

https://www.librechat.ai/docs/features/fork

[admdanielspalma]

Thank you for the follow-up. I want to clarify where my suggestion differs significantly from the current forking/editing workflow. Let me explain more directly from a daily-use perspective:

Right now, when working with many edits and forks in long conversations, it quickly becomes unmanageable. For example, after just a few days and several branches, it becomes very difficult to remember which variations were made inside a single chat (via edits), and which were split off into forks. Each fork appears as a separate chat with an almost identical beginning. The titles get mixed, and sometimes I lose track of which fork or edit contained a specific line of reasoning. This friction actually discourages the use of forks and edits, and I often end up just starting a new chat to avoid the confusion.

This pain point gets worse the more you use the system — reviewing or continuing any past branch inside an edit-heavy or forked chat becomes almost impossible, especially among many conversations.

Current Workflow Issues:

• When chats have many edits or forks, it's very hard to remember where you made each variation, both in the original chat and in its forks.
• In the sidebar, all forks look similar and pile up, making navigation confusing.
• The tiny selector for edits (1/2/3...) inside the chat is not practical to use in long conversations.
• Figuring out where to continue a line of thought, or which fork to branch from, takes time and defeats the fast, iterative workflow.

Proposed Solution:

• Any message with an edit would automatically show those edits as sub-items in the sidebar (nested under the main chat), with each edit being independently accessible and re-namable.
• From the sidebar, users could click directly into any variation (“sibling” branches, like in a mind-map), making it clear and quick to load the right context.
• There could even be a “create sibling variation from here...” option directly in the sidebar for convenience.
• The chat functionality would stay the same; only the navigation and organization become easier and more visual.

Illustration of idea:

Chat 1
├── Variation A (original flow)
│   └── Idea A1
│          [Create sibling from here...]
└── Variation B (edit from message 5)
    └── Idea B1 (edit from message 7)

This approach would make edits much more usable than the current 1/2/3 selector, and would also reduce the need for forking (or at least make forks much more obvious and organized). With this structure, I wouldn't get lost among dozens of chats and forks, and could easily track, rename, and continue any idea no matter how long it's been since I created it.

In summary: the key is not just to have the ability to fork or edit, but to provide a side-panel navigation system that visually and hierarchically organizes edits and branches within each chat, supporting both short- and long-term productivity.

Thank you for considering this UX improvement. It would make a huge difference for anyone working on iterative or complex projects with LibreChat!

[admdanielspalma]

Adding to the previous points, I’d like to expand a bit more on the navigation and organization improvements for edits/variations within chats:

The core of my suggestion is to implement an automatic, hierarchical sidebar system that visually organizes all edits (branches) under their parent chat — even for chats edited in the past. This would work as follows:

• When a chat contains multiple edits or alternative branches, a subtle “+” or arrow icon appears beside it in the sidebar, similar to how folders or documents with sub-sections are managed in file explorers.
• Clicking this icon expands the parent chat to reveal indented “child” variations — these could be initially named numerically (like 1.1, 1.2), but users can rename them at any time. The edit’s label would be saved in the message metadata.
• Crucially, this is just a navigational layer: The chat logic and editing/forking features remain unchanged. The user simply gains the ability to quickly view, rename, and jump between variations and their origins — even in complex or long-standing conversations.
• The UI would stay uncluttered, because these edit “trees” would only expand on demand, keeping the sidebar clean by default.

This approach essentially provides a per-chat “table of contents,” making it far easier to revisit, organize, or continue from any specific version, regardless of how long ago the branch was created or how many edits exist. It would help prevent losing track of subtle forks, reduce duplicate chats, and significantly improve the overall workflow for power users and newcomers alike.

I truly believe that bringing this ‘index’ and expandable tree to the sidebar would be a huge boost for usability and project management in LibreChat. Thanks again for considering.