# Gitea is the exclusive issue tracker — file-based fallback removed

**Supersedes:** ADR-0011 (provider-agnostic issue tracker with file-based default — archived during refactoring)

> **Note on the ADR-0011 number.** Every "ADR-0011" on this page means the *archived* provider-agnostic issue tracker ADR, which no longer exists in `docs/adr/` — it was removed when it was superseded, and the number 0011 was later reused for an unrelated decision, `docs/adr/0011-gitea-skill-deep-modules.md` (the gitea skill's split into deep modules). That file is not the ADR referenced below. The number is not renumbered here: these ADRs are a published record and renumbering would break every citation that already points at either one. The archived text is recoverable from git history.

ADR-0011 established a provider-agnostic model with `docs/issues/NNNN-<slug>.md` as the file-based default, switching to Gitea MCP at runtime when available. The interim model was justified because Gitea would not be configured until after Chunk 3, and the repo needed to work before then.

Gitea is now configured and in active use. The condition in ADR-0011 has been met. This ADR supersedes it.

Gitea is now the exclusive issue tracker for this repo. The file-based fallback is removed entirely:

- `docs/issues/` is deleted; all 28 local issue files are migrated to Gitea (completed → closed, open → open)
- `docs/prd/` is deleted; PRD files are migrated to Gitea as closed issues
- Skills and workflows create and reference issues exclusively via Gitea MCP — no runtime backend detection, no file-based path

Three alternatives were rejected. Keeping the file-based fallback adds code complexity with no benefit — Gitea MCP is a hard dependency for this repo on every machine that works with it. A provider-agnostic model with Gitea as the default but file-based as a fallback is the same problem: the fallback path exists but is never exercised, which means it will rot silently. Keeping `docs/issues/` as an archive alongside live Gitea issues creates a split-brain risk where two sources of truth diverge; git history already preserves the full text of migrated issues.

The file-based model also had a structural weakness: issues in `docs/issues/` were invisible from the Gitea UI, making it impossible to track work, assign milestones, or filter by label without opening the repo locally. Gitea provides all of that natively.

The "Provider-agnostic issue tracker" glossary entry in CONTEXT.md is updated in the same workstream to remove the file-based phase framing. (Amended 2026-08-17: the CONTEXT.md trim renamed that entry to **Issue**; it still records Gitea as this repo's canonical tracker and still tells skills to say "linked issue" generically.) The `providers/gitea/` adapter path described in ADR-0011 was never implemented — Gitea integration runs entirely via MCP, not a provider adapter.