Q: A critical Sev-1 incident halts production checkout. The team utilizes strict Trunk-Based Development. Do you create a `hotfix` branch explicitly off the broken production release tag, urgently fix it, deploy it directly, and explicitly merge it back to main later?

No. That is a traditional Git-Flow anti-pattern. If you heavily branch off production and deploy directly, you run the immense risk of forgetting to merge the explicit fix strictly back into main. The exact next standard sprint deployment will fatally overwrite your isolated fix, causing the Sev-1 incident to violently reappear identically. In strict Trunk-Based Development, you fundamentally Fix Forward. You branch the hotfix directly off main, rapidly push the fix directly to main, allow the CI pipeline to run an accelerated emergency suite, and instantly deploy main strictly back into production. main must absolutely always heavily remain the central source of unadulterated truth constantly.