I'm so aligned on your take on context engineering / context management. I found the default linear flow of conversation turns really frustrating and limiting. In fact, I still do. Sometimes you know upfront that the next thing you're to do will flood/poison the nicely crafted context you've built up... other times you realise after the fact. In both cases, you didn't have that many alternatives but to press on... Trees are the answer for sure.
I actually spent most of Dec building something with the same philosphy for my own use (aka me as the agent) when doing research and ideation with LLMs. Frustrated by most of the same limitations - want to build context to a good place then preserve/reuse it over and over, fire off side quests etc, bring back only the good stuff. Be able to traverse the tree forwards and back to understand how I got to a place...
Anyway, you've definitely built the more valuable incarnation of this - great work. I'm glad I peeled back the surface of the moltbot hysteria to learn about Pi.