# Gitea state model

Gitea owns accepted scope, criteria, priority, dependencies, work state, candidate/evidence links, blockers, and milestone composition. It does not replace code, tests, ADRs, canonical docs, or native evidence.

States:

- `Implementing`: active local work.
- `Engineering-complete`: relevant engineering gates pass; native/product acceptance may remain.
- `Acceptance-in-progress`: native or stakeholder validation is active or exposed a gap.
- `Candidate-ready`: stable scope and a nominated tree are ready for remaining release gates.
- `Blocked`: an external condition prevents progress.
- `Closed`: candidate evidence and every criterion are accepted.

User-discovered UX gaps return an item to acceptance-in-progress and become scope deltas, not automatic new issues. Close children, final signoff, epic, then milestone. Never close a milestone with open assigned issues unless the user explicitly changes its definition.
