Aviator CLI needs to maintain the metadata for branches so that it can remember the parent-child relationships among them. If you create branches with av branch, the metadata is created upon branch creation. You can attach the metadata for branches that are created with git branch.
We will use an example repository from https://github.com/octocat/hello-world. Clone it and initialize the Aviator CLI.
$ git clone https://github.com/octocat/hello-world
Cloning into 'hello-world'...
remote: Enumerating objects: 13, done.
remote: Total 13 (delta 0), reused 0 (delta 0), pack-reused 13
Receiving objects: 100% (13/13), done.
$ cd hello-world
$ av init
Successfully initialized repository for use with av!
Instead of using av branch, we use a normal Git command to create a branch and a commit.
$ git switch --create mytopic
Switched to a new branch 'mytopic'
$ git commit --allow-empty --message="New commit"
[mytopic d384683] New commit
As we can see, the newly created branch mytopic is not tracked in av tree, but it's shown in git branch.
$ av tree
$ git branch -vv
master 7fd1a60 [origin/master] Merge pull request #6 from Spaceghost/patch-1
* mytopic d384683 New commit
By running av adopt specifying the parent branch (in this case master) adds metadata for the current branch mytopic. Now, if you run av tree, you can see that mytopic is correctly recognized as a child of master.
$ av adopt
Choose which branches to adopt (Use space to select / deselect).
* mytopic (HEAD, chosen for adoption)
│ New commit
│
* master