Does anyone know of tools that let you branch off AI conversations without cluttering the main chat?

I've been using AI for research and I keep running into this annoying workflow issue. I'll be in the middle of a good conversation, then the AI mentions something technical or uses a term I don't fully understand. When I ask for clarification in the same chat, it just keeps adding to this long scrolling mess and I lose track of the main thread.

Like yesterday I was asking about data validation methods and wanted to quickly understand what "atomic facts" meant in that context. But if I ask in the same conversation, now my main research chat has this tangent stuck in the middle of it, and the AI's context window gets filled with stuff that's not really relevant to my main question.

I know some apps have "fork" features or conversation branching, but I haven't found anything that actually works well for this. Ideally I'd want to:

•⁠ ⁠Highlight a specific part of the AI's response

•⁠ ⁠Branch off into a separate mini-conversation just about that

•⁠ ⁠Keep that exploration isolated so it doesn't pollute the main chat

•⁠ ⁠Maybe save the key insight and attach it back to the original point

Does anything like this exist? Or am I just supposed to open 10 different chat windows and copy-paste context around like a caveman?

Would genuinely appreciate any suggestions. This is driving me nuts.