[lizztheblizz]

It's closer to your original assumption than your second. Branching relies on vreplication, and it does actually allow you to develop multiple versions of your schema against your full production dataset. The "magic" is a powerful materialization engine that allows every branch to maintain its own version, and it _does_ allow you to work with your actual data. This is just scratching the surface of what that can do, though. We have loads more features cooking. :)