# DELETE /api/v2/work-items/{work_item}

Delete a work item

- MCP id: work-items.destroy
- Scope: api:destroy:project_management
- Permission: project_management::manage_work_items
- Rate cost: 1 unit, write bucket.
- Cache-Control: private, no-store

Permanently deletes a work item.

This resource is hard-delete: there is no restore action, no `force` parameter and no `trashed` parameter. Its comments, subtasks, links and attachments go with it. A work item that has child work items is refused with `409` `state-conflict` and `conflict.reason` `has_children`: deleting a parent would silently delete the whole sub-tree. Move or delete the children first. Logged time is untouched: it hangs off the task, not the work item.

## Parameters
- work_item (integer or string, path): The WorkItem's numeric id. Or its issue_key, matching `[A-Z][A-Z0-9]*-[0-9]+`.
- X-Request-Id (header, optional): A correlation id of your own. It is recorded in our logs next to the server's request id but never returned: the response header always carries the server's id. A value that does not match the pattern is discarded silently, never rejected.
- If-Match (header, optional): The ETag a write is conditional on. A stale validator is 412 precondition-failed.

## Response 204

## Errors
- 403 forbidden-by-policy | insufficient-permission | insufficient-token-scope: Forbidden.
- 409 state-conflict: Conflict.
- 412 precondition-failed: Precondition failed.
- 400 idempotency-key-required | invalid-cursor | invalid-query-parameter | malformed-request | unsupported-parameter: Bad request.
- 401 token-expired | unauthenticated: Unauthenticated.
- 404 endpoint-not-found | resource-not-found: Not found.
- 406 not-acceptable: Not acceptable.
- 429 rate-limit-exceeded: Too many requests.
- 500 internal-error: Server error.
- 503 tenant-unavailable: Service unavailable.

## Example
```bash
curl -X DELETE \
  'https://<your-url>/api/v2/work-items/1' \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer <token>' \
  -H 'Accept: application/json'
```