Skip to main content

Deleting an issue, and who may do what

Most of the app is open to everybody on a project. A few things are not, and this page is the list - it is usually what you want when something is greyed out or refuses you.

The table

There are three roles, and they are not job titles - they are answers to "what is your relationship to this thing".

  • Project owner - whoever created the project.
  • Collaborator - anybody who has accepted an invitation to it.
  • You made it - you created that particular issue, or wrote that particular comment.
ActionOwnerCollaboratorNotes
See the project and its issuesyesyesNobody else can see it at all.
Create an issueyesyes
Change any field on any issueyesyesIncluding issues somebody else raised.
Add a commentyesyes
Edit or delete a commentyesonly your own
Delete an issueyesonly ones you created
Import a BCF fileyesyes
Export a BCF fileyesyes
Edit the project and its optionsyesno
Add, invite or remove peopleyesno
Delete the projectyesno

Anything not on this list is open to everybody on the project.

The rules are the same whether you are in the web app, using the API, or working through an AI assistant. There is no back door where one surface is more permissive than another.

Deleting an issue

Deleting takes the issue's comments, its attached files, its screenshots and its history with it. It cannot be undone, and there is no trash to recover it from.

warning

There is currently no "are you sure?" step when you delete an issue. The click deletes it. This is known and is being fixed; until then, be deliberate.

If what you want is to get something out of the way rather than destroy it, set the status to Closed and turn off Show Closed in the filter panel. The issue stops appearing without anything being lost.

Why you cannot delete an imported issue

Issues that arrived through a BCF import have no recorded creator here - they were raised in somebody else's software. Nobody matches "the person who created it", so only the project owner can delete them.

This is not a bug, and it is a reasonable place to land: imported issues are somebody else's record, and they are the ones most likely to be deleted by mistake in a tidy-up.

Comments

You can edit and delete your own comments. The project owner can edit and delete anybody's.

Comments that came in with a BCF import often have no author recorded, which - by the same logic as above - means only the project owner can touch them.

Note that editing a comment is not currently recorded anywhere: the activity feed shows the original, not the edit.

If you need something you cannot do

Ask the project owner. Adding a person, changing the dropdown values, or deleting the project are all deliberately theirs.

If you are the owner and it still refuses you, check you are signed in as the account that created the project - it is easy to have two.