Evolution of donor mass (top panel) and mass transfer rate (bottom panel) as a function of orbital period obtained adopting the CARB model for magnetic braking. We show the evolution of three illustrative CVs with initial post-CE white dwarf and donor star masses of 0.8 and 1.1 M_⊙, respectively. The initial post-CE orbital periods and donor helium core mass at the onset of mass transfer are different in each evolutionary track and are given by the following values: model 1: 2.20 d and ≈0.043 M_⊙ (dot-dashed black lines), model 2: 2.34 d and ≈0.068 M_⊙ (short-dashed blue lines), and model 3: 2.60 d and ≈0.105 M_⊙ (solid green lines). On top of that, we also show an example of standard CV evolutionary sequence (long-dashed red lines, from Belloni & Schreiber 2023) and an example of evolutionary sequence for the white dwarf channel (long-dashed orange lines, from Wong & Bildsten 2021). The arrows in the bottom panel were added for clarity and indicate the direction of the evolution. The tracks for which the orbital period minimum is below 20 min correspond to CV evolution leading to the formation of AM CVn binaries. Model 3 represents a mixed channel in which a CV leads to a close detached double white dwarf binary that latter becomes an AM CVn binary. The final evolution of this system is similar to the white dwarf channel for AM CVn binary formation. See text for more details.