Branches, versions, and merging

Branches are versioned snapshots of an agent's config (prompts, voices, tools, workflows) that let you test changes without touching live production. Main is the default branch and receives 100% of traffic unless a split is configured. Drafts are work-in-progress edits on a branch that are not committed to a version until published. Traffic splitting distributes a share of live conversations deterministically across branches (by conversation id) for A/B testing. Merging folds a source branch's changes into its parent (usually main), creating a new version on the target.

Host https://api.elevenlabs.io, header xi-api-key: $API_KEY. The engineer supplies $API_KEY and $AGENT_ID.

Branch operations fail most often on stale state: a wrong branch id, a traffic allocation that does not total 100, or an operation blocked by branch protection. Read current branch state first, then route to the exact operation.

HARD GATE: resolve the id before any write

Never write to a branch id you have not just confirmed. If the user names a branch ("switch to angelo/test-switch", "go to my test branch"), that name is not a ready-to-use id. Resolve it by listing branches and matching on name first, in the same task, before the first write. Do not reuse an id from earlier context, memory, or a guess. If no exact name match exists, say so and ask the user to confirm rather than picking the closest-looking one.

1. Read current branch state first

curl -s "https://api.elevenlabs.io/v1/convai/agents/$AGENT_ID/branches" \
  -H "xi-api-key: $API_KEY"