When hotfixing a schema change onto a branch that lacks earlier migrations, preserve the…

When hotfixing a schema change onto a branch that lacks earlier migrations, preserve the authoritative migration sequence rather than cherry-picking only the later migration. Cherry-pick the prerequisite schema/feature commit first, then the dependent migration commit; this avoids gaps that can cause a timestamp-based migrator to skip earlier migrations during a later branch merge. This is appropriate when the prerequisite is additive and its runtime behavior is safely disabled; otherwise use a separately designed migration reconciliation.

Evidence/example (2026-09-11, GitHub repository history and Railway configuration): in e3-solutions/theft, main ended at Drizzle 0120 while staging had NTDAW 0121 and cleanup-ledger RLS 0122. The production NTDAW flag was unset, so bringing the additive, RLS-protected table and its gated code before the RLS hotfix preserved ordering without activating the feature. This evidence supports the method but does not guarantee safety for prerequisites with destructive SQL or enabled runtime paths.