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

Migration: --feature to --mission

Status: Deprecated as of Mission 077-mission-terminology-cleanup. Full removal (3.2.3, #1060): the alias has been hard-removed from every user-facing and internal/agent command, including the eight commands that previously kept it during the deprecation window (implement, merge, next, research, context, accept, lifecycle plan/lifecycle tasks, mission-type current) and the internal/agent command cluster (agent status/tasks/action/context/mission, charter lint, materialize, validate-encoding, validate-tasks, verify/verify-setup) removed earlier in 3.2.x (#1060-A). --feature is no longer accepted anywhere — passing it exits with code 2 and "No such option: --feature".

Why This Change

The --feature CLI flag has been replaced by --mission as the canonical selector for tracked missions. This aligns the operator-facing CLI with the canonical terminology boundary:

  • Mission Type = reusable workflow blueprint (software-dev, research, documentation)
  • Mission = concrete tracked item under kitty-specs/<mission-slug>/
  • Mission Run = runtime/session execution instance only

--feature is no longer available anywhere, including the top-level commands that kept it as a hidden deprecated alias during the migration window. All first-party surfaces have moved to --mission.

What Changed

Before After
spec-kitty mission current --feature 077-foo spec-kitty mission current --mission 077-foo
spec-kitty next --feature 077-foo spec-kitty next --mission 077-foo
spec-kitty agent tasks status --feature 077-foo spec-kitty agent tasks status --mission 077-foo (the --feature form is now removed — it errors)

--feature is rejected everywhere with "No such option: --feature" — there is no remaining command where it resolves, warns, or is merely hidden from --help.

Behavioral Changes

Any --feature occurrence, on any command, is now a parser error. The command exits before selector resolution with exit code 2.

How to Migrate Scripts

Replace --feature with --mission anywhere you invoke spec-kitty.

# Old
spec-kitty mission current --feature 077-mission-terminology-cleanup

# New
spec-kitty mission current --mission 077-mission-terminology-cleanup

For bulk shell-script migration:

find . -name "*.sh" -o -name "*.bash" | xargs sed -i '' 's/--feature /--mission /g'

Review the diff before committing. A blind replacement can catch unrelated tools or documentation.

Suppressing the Warning During Cutover (historical)

SPEC_KITTY_SUPPRESS_FEATURE_DEPRECATION was used to silence the deprecation warning during the alias window. Now that --feature is fully removed (3.2.3, #1060), the variable is inert — it is accepted but has no effect, since there is no warning left to suppress. See Environment Variables for the current state.

Removal (complete)

--feature was removed everywhere in 3.2.3 (#1060). This section previously listed forward-looking removal criteria; they are retained here only for historical record of what gated the removal:

  1. First-party doctrine skills, examples, and user-facing docs teach --mission only.
  2. First-party machine-facing surfaces completed Scope B alignment.
  3. A documented audit window showed zero first-party legacy --feature usage in active CI and shipped scripts.

References

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