How do you use Google Chat's new inline threading?

For the last 6 months Google has been "upgrading" Google Chat spaces to use inline threading instead of the previous system of grouping messages by topic (a feature we loved and a reason we moved from Twist). Our team is failing to find a workflow that works for two reasons:

1. It's not obvious what the main thread in a space should be. Should each message be a topic title/description, and all replies be inline? But you can still reply to a message without going inline... so how do you enforce consistency?

2. Inline replies get lost. The Home shortcut only shows one notification per space. To find all new inline replies in a space you have to scroll back through the space looking "X unread replies".