No stateless (workflow-less) work items?

While it's not mandatory to define a workflow for a work item type in the process config editor (i.e., you can leave it as "None"), at runtime trying to save a new work item of such a type results in an error that the work item either has no type or no workflow. Is there really no support for fully stateless work items? Or is there something tricky I have to set? Library article 129 is not clear on this, it just says you can define a state transition policy, not that you have to.

While it's not mandatory to define a workflow for a work item type in
the process config editor (i.e., you can leave it as
"None"), at runtime trying to save a new work item of such
a type results in an error that the work item either has no type or
no workflow. Is there really no support for fully stateless work
items? Or is there something tricky I have to set? Library article
129 is not clear on this, it just says you
can define a state transition policy,
not that you have to.

That is correct ... you must associate a workflow with a work item type in order to instantiate it. I've submitted work item 193559 to get this clarified. Note: You can just create a simple workflow with a single state, just to make the work item machinery happy.

(or at least fix the workflow type editor to require a workflow, since it delays the error until you actually try to use it in a project area).

The bare minimum for a "stateless" work item appears to be a
workflow with two states plus two actions.