Variants

Request named candidates

Use Variants when you want to compare approaches before committing to one. In your Annotation, turn on Request Variants and describe meaningful differences: “Compare a compact inline alert with a more prominent banner. Keep the wording the same.” Ask your connected agent to implement the request.

The request is Variant Intent; the generated candidates form a Variant Set. Requesting candidates does not itself generate them—the coding agent must do that work. Variants do not require a Design Action or Impeccable.

Compare before you Keep

Open the Annotation’s generated Variants and activate a named candidate to see it on the page. Switching the Active Variant changes the presentation for evaluation; it does not resolve the Annotation or commit to that choice.

Close and reopen the Annotation to continue the same comparison. To discard the Active Variant, activate another candidate first. An unresolved comparison must retain at least two candidates, so individual discard is unavailable when it would leave only one.

Finalize cleanly

When you have decided, use Keep for the chosen candidate. This is the decision to preserve that implementation and finish the comparison. Ask the agent to reconcile the decision in source and verify the final result before resolving the Annotation.

Some comparisons need temporary source code, called a Scaffold, so candidates can coexist. Waypoint records your decision; the coding agent removes that temporary structure and the unwanted implementations. A Keep decision is not proof that source cleanup has finished.

Cancel a comparison or request another attempt

Cancel the Variant Set when you want to end the comparison without keeping a candidate. Cancellation removes its stored candidates and preview while preserving the Annotation as Pending. It is different from discarding the Annotation itself.

Tell the agent to clean up any temporary source Scaffold after cancellation. The cancellation event represents your decision, not lost work to recreate. Author new Variant Intent if you want another comparison.

While a Variant Set is unresolved, the brief and Design Intent are read-only. For revisions to an existing comparison, discuss the changes with the agent so it can replace the candidate set. If cleanup fails, inspect the remaining work with the agent before trying to resolve the Annotation.