Table of Contents

Migration note: This page documents a migration path or historical transition. It is not the current 3.2 happy path.

Migration: --mission to --mission-type

Status: Deprecated as of Mission 077-mission-terminology-cleanup. Removal: Gated on named conditions. No calendar date is set.

Why This Change

On a small set of blueprint-selection commands, --mission used to mean "mission type" instead of "tracked mission slug". That created an inverse-drift bug because --mission means tracked mission everywhere else in the main CLI.

Those blueprint-selection sites now use --mission-type as the canonical flag. --mission remains available only as a hidden deprecated alias on those sites during the migration window.

This applies to the inverse-drift command family:

  • spec-kitty agent mission create
  • spec-kitty charter interview
  • spec-kitty lifecycle specify
  • any additional first-party blueprint selector updated as part of Mission 077

What Changed

Before After
spec-kitty agent mission create new-thing --mission software-dev spec-kitty agent mission create new-thing --mission-type software-dev
spec-kitty charter interview --mission research spec-kitty charter interview --mission-type research
spec-kitty specify new-thing --mission software-dev spec-kitty specify new-thing --mission-type software-dev

Behavioral Changes

  1. --mission-type is the only advertised flag in --help output.
  2. --mission still works on these sites, but emits exactly one deprecation warning.
  3. Passing both flags with different values fails deterministically and names both values in the error.

How to Migrate Scripts

Replace blueprint-selector uses of --mission with --mission-type.

# Old
spec-kitty agent mission create new-thing --mission software-dev

# New
spec-kitty agent mission create new-thing --mission-type software-dev

Suppressing the Warning During Cutover

If you need to silence the deprecation warning temporarily while cutting over:

export SPEC_KITTY_SUPPRESS_MISSION_TYPE_DEPRECATION=1

This suppresses the warning only. Conflict detection remains active.

Removal Criteria

The deprecated inverse alias can be removed only when:

  1. First-party docs and skills use --mission-type consistently for blueprint selection.
  2. All inverse-drift compatibility tests are green without relying on the alias.
  3. A documented audit window shows zero first-party scripted usage of --mission for blueprint selection.

Removal is a separate follow-up change, not part of Mission 077.

References

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