# tea CLI — Gitea CLI Fallback

`tea` is a CLI tool for Gitea. Use it as a backup when MCP tools fail or are unavailable.

## Prerequisites

- `tea` must be installed (`brew install tea` or `go install gitea.com/gitea/tea@latest`)
- Authenticated via `tea login add` (see `references/auth.md`)

## Common Operations

### Issues

```bash
# List issues
tea issues --repo owner/repo

# View issue details
tea issues --repo owner/repo 12

# Search issues
tea issues --repo owner/repo --state open --labels bug

# Create issue comment
tea comment --repo owner/repo 12 "comment body"
```

### API fallback (raw)

When a specific `tea` subcommand doesn't exist, use the raw API:

```bash
# GET request
tea api GET /repos/{owner}/{repo}/issues/{index}

# POST request
tea api POST /repos/{owner}/{repo}/issues/{index}/comments --body '{"body": "text"}'

# Wiki pages
tea api GET /repos/{owner}/{repo}/wiki/pages
tea api GET /repos/{owner}/{repo}/wiki/page/{pageName}
tea api POST /repos/{owner}/{repo}/wiki/new --body '{"title":"page","content_base64":"..."}'
tea api PATCH /repos/{owner}/{repo}/wiki/page/{pageName} --body '{"content_base64":"..."}'
```

### Debugging

```bash
# Check current login
tea login list

# Test connectivity
tea api GET /version

# View repo info
tea repos --repo owner/repo
```

## When to Use tea vs MCP

| Scenario | Preferred |
|----------|-----------|
| Normal workflow | MCP tools (`mcp__gitea__*`) |
| MCP server down / unreachable | `tea` CLI |
| Investigating errors / debugging | `tea api` for raw responses |
| Bulk operations / scripting | `tea` CLI in Bash |