I found another weird branch/versioning bug that may be useful for debugging.
- If I enter a conversation through ChatGPT Search, all version arrows in that conversation suddenly appear at once.
- I had the same conversation open in two tabs.
Tab A was left untouched on prompt n → response n1.
In Tab B, I regenerated the last response to n2, then continued a long branch under n2. - About half an hour later, I returned to the still-unrefreshed Tab A. It had somehow gained a 1/2 version arrow under prompt n. Switching to n2 worked normally, but after that the branch state became corrupted. When I switched back toward n1, I got a very strange state where prompt n was followed by a completely blank assistant area.
- I then opened the same conversation in a fresh Tab C. It automatically landed on that blank state. In the new version selector, the blank response was counted as 11/11. Prompt n had previously been regenerated 9 times, so n1 + n2 would indeed make 11 versions total — but the long branch under n2 was attached to 10/11, while 11/11 was this blank/nonexistent response.
- I checked the conversation with a third-party chat-tree diagram extension. There was no branch/node containing an empty assistant response at all.
- Back in Tab B, I continued the real long branch with another message and refreshed. It correctly returned to the latest real node.
So this looks like the UI/version selector can sometimes create a “ghost” version/state that is not present in the actual conversation tree, possibly after switching branches from a stale tab.