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The review panel has a chip with a branch icon. By default it says:
That is the base_sha pinned when the worktree was created. Click it and the BranchPicker opens.

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The list

The branches come from local git, ordered by commit date, most recent first. Each row carries the name, the subject of the last commit and, if it is a remote one, the remote label. What the list does for you: The current branch comes with a green ✓.
The filter is 200 branches, full stop — the 200 most recent. In a repo with a big history, the branch you want may not be in the list, and the search box doesn’t help there: it filters what already came, it does not go fetch more.
The search filters by name or commit subject. watcher finds both fix/watcher and the branch whose last commit says “fix: watcher stuck in a loop”.

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Exploring

Clicking a branch’s row does not switch branches. It becomes what the panel shows — the chip turns violet with its name, and the diff becomes that branch’s work. The exploration diff is not base_sha..HEAD. It is:
The merge-base is recalculated every time, so what you see is what the branch has on top of the default base — without whatever the base moved on its own. Back to session undoes the exploration and the chip goes back to base ‥ HEAD.

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The default base

The comparison base is resolved in this order, stopping at the first one that exists:
1

origin/HEAD

The remote’s default branch. It is the normal case for a cloned repo.
2

main, then master

Local. It applies when there is no remote — or when origin/HEAD isn’t resolved in your clone.
3

HEAD

Last resort. Comparing against itself gives an empty diff, and that is better than an error.
A shallow clone, or one made in a way that didn’t bring origin/HEAD, falls back to the local main/master. If your project uses develop as its base, exploration will compare against main — there is no way to configure this.

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Fetch

The cloud icon next to the search runs:
That is the picker’s only network operation, and it only happens when you click. Nothing fetches in the background, nothing fetches on a timer. Once the fetch is done, the list reloads by itself — and --prune makes the remotes that died on the server disappear from the list.

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Switching branches

The checkout has its own door: the icon to the right of every row that isn’t the current one. It is armed in two clicks. The first turns the icon amber (“Click again to confirm the checkout”); the second executes. If you don’t confirm within 3 seconds, it disarms itself. What happens next:
  • Local branch → git checkout <branch>.
  • Remote branch → git checkout --track origin/<branch>, creating the local one with tracking.
A dirty tree refuses the checkout. If there is anything uncommitted, you get the error: “The working tree has uncommitted changes — commit or discard them before switching branches.”This is not conservatism: TYBA never uses git stash in automation. The stash is shared across all of the repository’s worktrees — automating stash in one session would be messing with another’s stack. So it refuses, and the decision is yours.
In a non-isolated session, the picker operates on the root of the session’s repository. A checkout there switches the branch of your actual working copy — the same one your editor has files open in.In an isolated session, the checkout only touches its own worktree, and the rest of your machine feels nothing.

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Ref names

Every name coming out of the picker is validated before it becomes a git argument. What gets refused:
  • empty;
  • starts with - (-rf is a flag, not a branch);
  • contains .. (a..b is a range, not a branch);
  • has a space or a null byte.
The names come from for-each-ref itself, so in practice they pass. The validation exists because IPC is a boundary: what arrives there is input, not fact.

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What does not exist

  • Creating a branch from the picker. A branch is born with the worktree, derived from the task title.
  • Deleting a branch from the picker. The tyba/… branch is deleted along with the worktree, in the post-delivery flow.
  • Configuring the default base. It is origin/HEAD → main → master → HEAD, and that’s it.
  • Automatic fetch. Network only on a click.
  • Pushing from the picker. The push lives in the review, after you have seen the diff.

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See also

Reading the diff

The panel the picker lives in.

Resolving conflicts

When the merge stops halfway.