Delete a work item

DELETE/api/v2/workspaces/{slug}/projects/{project_id}/work-items/{pk}/

Delete a work item. The delete is a soft delete — the row is retained internally — but it is gone from every API surface, and there is no endpoint to bring it back.

A successful delete returns 204 with an empty body. Deleting a work item that is already gone returns 404, so the call is not idempotent from the client's point of view.

If you want the work item out of the way but recoverable, use Archive a work item instead.

Path Parameters

slug:requiredstring

The workspace slug. It appears in your Plane URLs — in https://app.plane.so/my-team/projects/, the slug is my-team.

project_id:requiredstring (uuid)

The project the work item belongs to.

pk:requiredstring (uuid)

The work item's UUID. This lookup is UUID-only — a PROJ-142 identifier here returns 404.

Deleting is not reversible through the API

There is no undelete endpoint. Confirm with the user before wiring this into an automation, and prefer archiving for anything you might want back.

Response shaping

fields:optionalstring

Comma-separated list of fields to return. Unrequested keys are omitted from the response, not returned as null, so absent means "not requested" and null means "actually null". id always comes back whether or not you name it.

Pass all for every requestable field. An unknown name is a 400 that lists the valid set and suggests the closest match, so a typo can't silently cost you the saving.

Requestable here: archived_at, assignee_ids, created_at, created_by_id, custom_fields, cycle_id, id, identifier, is_draft, label_ids, module_ids, name, parent_id, priority, project_id, sequence_id, start_date, state_id, target_date, type_id.

See Sparse fields.

expand:optionalstring

Comma-separated relations to embed alongside the ids: assignees (the assigned users), cycle (the cycle it belongs to), labels (the applied labels), modules (the modules it belongs to), parent (its parent work item), state (the work item's state object), type (its work item type).

Expansion is separate-key: ?expand=state keeps state_id and adds a state object next to it, so an id is never replaced by an object. An unknown value is a 400.

?fields= and ?expand= are independent namespaces. Relation names are not valid ?fields= tokens (and vice versa), and an expanded object survives field filtering — ?fields=id,name&expand=state returns id, name and state. See Expanding relations.

Scopes

projects.work_items:write

Errors

Status	Code	Cause
400	invalid_request	The request could not be processed — for example a pk that isn't a valid UUID.
401	unauthorized	Missing or invalid credentials.
402	payment_required	The feature this endpoint belongs to isn't enabled on your plan, or is switched off.
403	forbidden	Your role or token scope can't delete this work item.
404	not_found	No such work item, or it's outside your project or tenant.
406	not_acceptable	The Accept header asks for a representation the API can't produce.
409	conflict	The delete collides with a protected-resource constraint.
413	payload_too_large	The request body is over the size limit.
415	unsupported_media_type	The Content-Type isn't one this endpoint accepts.
429	rate_limited	Throttled. Honor the Retry-After header before retrying.

Delete a work item

curl -X DELETE \
  "https://api.plane.so/api/v2/workspaces/my-team/projects/4af68566-94a4-4eb3-94aa-50dc9427067b/work-items/8f4c2b1e-0d3a-4f7b-9c21-6e5a8b7d4f13/" \
  -H "X-Api-Key: $PLANE_API_KEY"

import requests

response = requests.delete(
    "https://api.plane.so/api/v2/workspaces/my-team/projects/4af68566-94a4-4eb3-94aa-50dc9427067b"
    "/work-items/8f4c2b1e-0d3a-4f7b-9c21-6e5a8b7d4f13/",
    headers={"X-Api-Key": "your-api-key"},
)
print(response.status_code)  # 204

const response = await fetch(
  "https://api.plane.so/api/v2/workspaces/my-team/projects/4af68566-94a4-4eb3-94aa-50dc9427067b" +
    "/work-items/8f4c2b1e-0d3a-4f7b-9c21-6e5a8b7d4f13/",
  {
    method: "DELETE",
    headers: { "X-Api-Key": "your-api-key" },
  },
);
console.log(response.status); // 204

Response204

No content.

Response403

{
  "type": "forbidden",
  "code": "forbidden",
  "detail": "You do not have permission to delete this work item."
}

Who can delete

Deleting is gated per work item, not just per project. Depending on how the project's roles are configured, the right to delete may be limited to administrators plus the work item's own creator — so a token that can edit a work item may still get a 403 when it tries to delete one it didn't create. The response is 403 forbidden and nothing is written.

Delete or archive?

	Delete	Archive
Endpoint	This page	Archive
Response	204, empty body	200 with the work item
Reversible	No	Yes, via unarchive
Effect on reads	Gone everywhere	Excluded from the default list and detail reads
Use it for	Mistakes, spam, test data	Finished or abandoned work you want to keep