diff --git a/deploy/stack-deploy.sh b/deploy/stack-deploy.sh
index 17ffda8..33807cf 100755
--- a/deploy/stack-deploy.sh
+++ b/deploy/stack-deploy.sh
@@ -38,10 +38,36 @@
 #     pre-escaping) or values get doubled twice. Getting this wrong
 #     silently corrupts any secret/hash containing '$' (confirmed impact:
 #     LITELLM keys truncated, IMMICH_KIOSK_BASICAUTH bcrypt hash mismatched).
+#
+# Usage: stack-deploy.sh [-e|--emergency] [-f|--force] <stack-name>
+#   Flags may appear before or after the stack name, e.g. both
+#   `stack-deploy.sh traefik -e` and `stack-deploy.sh -e traefik` work.
+#
+# -e/--emergency and -f/--force (added 2026-09-12, circular-dependency
+# bootstrap incident — see deploy/git-guard.sh header for full detail):
+#   Both are passed straight through to git-guard.sh unchanged; this script
+#   does not interpret them itself beyond stripping them from the stack-name
+#   argument list. -e tries alternate Gitea endpoints (VIP, then each node's
+#   direct IP) before falling back to normal sync logic against whichever
+#   one responds. -f skips the sync check entirely — last resort only, read
+#   the warning banner it prints. Neither flag changes anything about the
+#   render/mount-guard/deploy steps below; they only affect whether and how
+#   git-guard.sh's pre-flight check runs.
 
 set -euo pipefail
 
-STACK="${1:?Usage: stack-deploy.sh <stack-name>}"
+# ── Flag parsing (stack name is whatever's left after flags are stripped) ──
+GUARD_FLAGS=()
+STACK=""
+for arg in "$@"; do
+  case "$arg" in
+    -e|--emergency) GUARD_FLAGS+=(-e) ;;
+    -f|--force)     GUARD_FLAGS+=(-f) ;;
+    *)              STACK="$arg" ;;
+  esac
+done
+: "${STACK:?Usage: stack-deploy.sh [-e|--emergency] [-f|--force] <stack-name>}"
+
 DIR="/volume1/docker/compose-files"
 PY="$DIR/deploy/envparse.py"
 MOUNT_GUARD="$DIR/deploy/mount-guard.py"
@@ -50,7 +76,7 @@ GLOBAL_ENV="$DIR/deploy/global.env"
 # ── Pre-flight: ensure local checkout is in sync with Gitea ─────────────────
 # Prevents deploying from a stale/diverged local tree (see incident 2026-08-26).
 # Invoked via `bash` explicitly so the tracked file's exec bit doesn't matter.
-bash "$DIR/deploy/git-guard.sh" || { echo "ERROR: git-guard check failed. Deploy aborted."; exit 1; }
+bash "$DIR/deploy/git-guard.sh" "${GUARD_FLAGS[@]:-}" || { echo "ERROR: git-guard check failed. Deploy aborted."; exit 1; }
 
 # ── Locate compose file(s) ──────────────────────────────────────────────────