Filestage

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Build me the review and approval tool that replaces Filestage.

One rule decides whether this works: **the reviewer is a client who will not create an account, will not read instructions, and is opening it on a phone.** Everything below serves that.

STACK
- Node 20+ with Fastify, server-rendered HTML with a little vanilla JS
- SQLite through better-sqlite3, WAL mode
- ffmpeg for video posters, pdf.js for documents
- Caddy in front

THE DATA MODEL
- projects, files: id, project_id, name, kind, path, sha256, uploaded_at
- versions: id, file_id, number, path, uploaded_at — **a new upload is a version, never a replacement**
- comments: id, version_id, body, author, at, resolved_at, position_json — position is a timestamp for video, a page and point for a PDF, a percentage for an image
- decisions: id, version_id, reviewer, verdict, note, at — approved or changes requested, append-only
- invites: id, project_id, email, token, role

COMMENTING IN PLACE
- Video: click the timeline, the comment carries the exact millisecond, and clicking it seeks there. Frame-accurate matters — 'at about two minutes' costs an hour of hunting
- PDF: click a point on a page; store page plus percentage coordinates so zoom never moves the pin
- Image: percentage coordinates on the image itself
- Drawing on top for anything visual, stored as a shape list rather than a flattened picture, so it survives a zoom

THE REVIEWER PATH
- A token link. No account, no password, no application to install
- Their name typed once and remembered
- **Two buttons at the end: approve, or request changes with a reason.** A review with no decision is a thread nobody closes
- Works on a phone, which is where half of client reviews happen

VERSIONS AND THE ARGUMENT THEY SETTLE
- Every upload is a new version; old ones stay reachable forever
- Comments belong to the version they were made on, and carry forward as 'from v2' rather than being lost
- **Side-by-side compare of two versions.** That is what ends 'this was never fixed'
- The decision record — who approved which version, when — is the whole reason a studio buys this

KEEPING IT MOVING
- A due date per review round, and one reminder before it
- A status per file that is derived from its decisions, never typed
- Notify the uploader when every required reviewer has decided, not on each comment

WHAT MATTERS MOST
Token links with no account, and versions that never overwrite. The first is whether clients use it at all; the second is what makes the approval defensible.