Reply Workspace Clone Eligibility and Limits
How reply authors can clone a parent workspace into a reply, when that option appears, and which limits prevent cloning even if the parent post already has a workspace.
Reply Workspace Clone Eligibility and Limits
Where you see this in the app
This page explains the Clone from parent workspace action that can appear when a user is creating or editing a reply post that has its own workspace.
It exists for reply authors who want to start from the parent post's workspace project instead of building a reply workspace from scratch.
Who can clone a parent workspace
The clone option is intentionally narrow.
A user should expect the clone option only when all of the following are true:
- the current post is a reply,
- the current user is the author of that reply,
- the parent post already has a workspace to clone from.
If any of those conditions is not true, the button may not appear at all.
Parent settings that must allow it
Even when the parent has a workspace, cloning is still blocked unless the parent workspace is intentionally clone-friendly.
The parent workspace must allow reply cloning and must expose a view mode that is safe to copy from.
In practical terms, users should think about these requirements:
| Requirement | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Parent allows reply-workspace cloning | The author opted into letting replies fork the parent project |
| Parent workspace is viewable by the reply author | You cannot clone what you cannot access |
| Parent CLI/view mode is read-only-friendly | Cloning is designed around a safe source workspace, not an unrestricted editing session |
This keeps cloning from becoming an accidental leak of private or collaborator-only workspace state.
What gets copied and what does not
Cloning copies the parent workspace project files that define the runnable workspace project.
Users should not assume it copies everything.
Important boundary:
| Copied | Not copied |
|---|---|
The parent project/ workspace content | Private runtime/session data such as /data |
| The parent project structure and files | Temporary per-session state |
That means cloning is best understood as a project starting point, not as a full live-session duplicate.
Why the button may be missing or fail
Common reasons:
- the post is not actually a reply,
- the current user is not the reply author,
- the parent workspace owner disabled reply cloning,
- the reply author does not have view access to the parent workspace,
- the parent workspace is not in the required safe view mode,
- the parent workspace no longer exists or is not ready to clone.
If the button appears but the action fails, the user should treat that as a workspace access or eligibility problem first, not as a generic upload failure.
Related docs
Related docs
See it in action
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Workspace History, Snapshots, and Rollback
How the History tab works, what Save snapshot creates, what Restore changes, and how users should think about revisions, rollback, and persistence.
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Workspace Attachments, Published Site, and Share Links
How the Artifact and Workspace tabs relate, what published-site visibility and expiry mean, and how authors manage share links for artifact sites.