Had some more thoughts about this, and I actually think that lkhrs 's sketch n1 might work the best. An extra line could be added for every level to show the hierarchy.
I wonder how it would look like to have the caret next to the lines.
Adding lines will create a problem as this will require more space horizontally though, so there will have to be a cap
Alternatively, instead of lines, we could just add a number of dots that would stock vertically, capping out at level 6 or something?
I'm sure this could look a lot better in the right hands lol
