# Provider-agnostic issue tracker with file-based default and provider adapters

Skills and workflows reference a "linked issue" generically rather than coupling to a specific issue tracker. In the file-based phase, an issue is a `docs/issues/NNNN-<slug>.md` file. When a provider MCP (e.g. Gitea MCP) is configured, skills detect it at runtime and use it instead. The active backend is determined by MCP availability — no config flag required. "Issue" is the canonical cross-provider term; GitHub, GitLab, and Gitea all use it natively.

Gitea-specific skills (`setup-gitea-mcp`, `post-pr-review`, `create-issue`) are a provider adapter at `providers/gitea/` — structurally identical to how `providers/claude-code/` adapts core content for Claude Code. They are not part of the core skill library.

Two alternatives were rejected. Gitea-specific skills in the core library would block use before Gitea is configured and embed a provider assumption into skills that are otherwise provider-neutral. Per-provider skill variants (e.g. `implement-feature` + `implement-feature-gitea`) create maintenance overhead with no functional gain — the only difference is the issue lookup mechanism, not the skill logic.

The file-based default was chosen because this repo must work before Gitea is set up. File-based issues are already the working convention (`docs/issues/`), established in Chunk 1. Gitea is the first concrete provider and will be configured after Chunk 3; existing file-based issues will be migrated at that point.

This decision makes the skills library usable on any machine without external service dependencies, while keeping Gitea integration as a first-class path once available. The provider adapter pattern (`providers/gitea/`) is consistent with ADR-0007 (provider adapters as symlinks) and ADR-0008 (factory boundary).