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Fix a bug

When you need this: something's broken and you want the shortest safe path to a merged fix.

The fast path

Bugs and chores skip the design gates — no spec, no plan, just an isolated worktree and a PR:

mship item new "500 on empty search" --kind bug
mship spawn "fix empty search 500" --work-item <wi-id>
cd $(mship status | jq -r '.resolved_task.worktrees | to_entries[0].value')

# reproduce, fix, commit
mship test
mship finish

That's the whole loop. The work item takes seconds and keeps the fix findable later (what was broken, which task fixed it, which PR shipped it).

Emergencies

If even item new is too much ceremony right now:

mship spawn "hotfix prod 500" --hotfix

--hotfix bypasses the work-item requirement for this task (and mship finish --hotfix does the same at finish time). Bypasses aren't silent — each one is recorded to .mothership/bypass-log.jsonl, so the escape hatch leaves a trail.

What stays enforced

The fast path skips design gates, not safety:

  • Worktree isolation — the fix still happens on a feature branch in its own worktree, never directly on main.
  • The edit guard — commits (and agent edits) to a repo's main checkout are still refused while a task is active.
  • Test visibility — mship finish still surfaces failing tests in any affected repo before you ship.

If the "bug fix" starts growing a design (new behavior, new surface area), promote it: create a spec and follow Ship a feature.