Artifacts supports ordinary Git branches within a repo. A fork creates a separate repo with its own remote and tokens. Branches share repo access and lifecycle; Cloudflare recommends separate repos when agent work needs independent isolation and cleanup.

Branches and forks are distinct

Artifacts supports ordinary Git branches inside one repository. Creating a branch does not create another Artifacts repository.

Branch	Fork
Another line of work inside the same repository	A separate repository initialized from existing history
Same remote URL and repository access	Own remote URL and repository tokens
Shares the repository lifecycle	Can be retained or deleted independently

In an existing clone, create and publish a branch using normal Git:

git switch -c experiment
# Make changes and commit them.
git -c http.extraHeader="Authorization: Bearer $ARTIFACTS_TOKEN" push -u origin experiment

The push requires a write Git token. Documented tokens are scoped to a repository, with read or write access; no branch-specific token scope is documented.

Cloudflare recommends branches when collaborators share a lifecycle, and separate repositories for autonomous work that needs independent access and cleanup.

Sources: Best practices, Git protocol and authentication, Fork API.