dragonflight/PRODUCT.md

# Product

## What it is

Dragonflight (codebase name; UI brand: "Dragonflight · Wild Dragon Broadcast") is an on-prem broadcast media asset manager and live ingest controller. Operators capture from SRT, RTMP, and SDI sources, schedule windowed recordings against named recorders, transcode/proxy in the background, browse and clip in a library, import from YouTube, and hand off to Premiere or an in-house editor.

The deployable surface is a React (Babel-in-browser) single-page app served by nginx, talking to a Node/Express API backed by Postgres + Redis + BullMQ, with capture and worker containers handling the actual media.

Stack lives at `services/web-ui` (UI), `services/mam-api` (API), `services/capture`, `services/worker`, `services/editor`.

## Register

**Product.** This is operator UI for a working broadcast tool, not a brand site or marketing surface. Design serves the operator's job, not the brand's identity.

## Users

Primary: broadcast operators and engineers running live productions. They schedule and supervise back-to-back recordings across multiple recorders in a single shift. They care about: what's recording right now, what's about to start, what failed, and which recorder is bound to what source.

Secondary: editors and producers who consume the resulting library, comment on assets, request proxy regeneration. They mostly live in the Library and Asset detail screens, not the scheduler.

Tertiary: admins managing recorders, users, cluster nodes, and storage. Live in the Admin screens.

## Product purpose

Replace a stack of one-trick tools (NewBlue scheduler, vMix capture, ad-hoc Premiere ingest, manual S3 syncs) with a single operator surface that supervises recorders, owns the asset catalog through proxy generation, and stays out of the editor's way once footage lands.

## Tone

Function-first. Dense. Operations-room. Mono fonts where data lives. Small type. Restrained chrome. The operator should be able to glance at any screen and read the state of the system in under a second; they should never wonder "is this still happening" or "did that finish."

Not: marketing-warm, conversational, gamified, congratulatory.

## Strategic principles

1. **Glance-readable status.** Every list, every cell, every badge must answer "what is the state of this thing right now" without a hover.
2. **Trust the operator.** No confirmation modals for reversible actions. No nag, no toasts for routine success. Errors stay visible until acknowledged.
3. **Time is the spine.** This product is about time-based events (recordings, schedules, jobs). UIs should privilege time as a primary axis, not bury it under categorical filters.
4. **Density over whitespace.** Operators run multi-monitor setups and want maximum signal per pixel. Generous whitespace is a brand-site reflex; reject it here.
5. **No half-states.** Pending UIs disable controls; live UIs show live data; failed UIs show the failure inline, not in a separate notification feed.

## Anti-references

Steer away from:

- **Linear-pastel SaaS aesthetics.** Purples, mint accents, friendly empty states with cartoon line illustrations.
- **Google-Calendar generic.** A neutral month grid with rounded event chips, no operational signal, optimized for "is Friday free" rather than "is recorder A in conflict at 14:00."
- **Gantt-chart project-management feel.** Implies long-horizon planning of tasks with dependencies; this product is hour-scale broadcast operations.
- **Cards-for-everything.** Identical card grids of icon+label+value. Particularly the SaaS hero-metric template.
- **Decorative blur / glassmorphism / gradient text.** Read as decorative AI slop in a broadcast-ops context.
- **NewBlue / Wirecast skinning.** Heavy bevels, gradient buttons, drop shadows. Read as outdated broadcast software.

## Decision context (Schedule v2)

The Schedule screen was rebuilt as an EPG (electronic program guide) timeline. Operator confirmed:

- Density: **heavy / back-to-back, many recorders all day** — month grid was the wrong primary.
- At-a-glance signals: now/next, recorder bookings (conflicts), project context, failure history.
- Aesthetic: **studio / cinematic — dark, type-led, accent moments.** DaVinci-Resolve-panel territory.
- Scope: full rethink — replace the primary view.

Implementation: recorder rows × time-of-day horizontal axis, sticky gutter + ruler, vertical hot-red now-line, event blocks colored by project, status pills in a top strip. Today / Week / List views.