# Notestack: Design Doc

Status: draft v0.1 (2026-09-22)
Owner: Firebird Technologies

> Note: Section 0 of the product brief was not included in the handoff. This doc reconstructs the
> product framing from Sections 5 to 12 plus the kickoff decisions. Replace Section 1 with the
> original Section 0 text when available.

## 1. Product

Notestack turns a writer's archive (Substack, Ghost, Medium, any RSS feed or URL) into a grounded
research notebook and a launch engine. Writers can:

- Ask questions of their own archive and get answers with citations to their posts.
- Generate a two-host audio overview of a post or notebook (ElevenLabs).
- Generate videos (explainer 16:9, vertical short 9:16, audiogram 1:1) rendered with Remotion.
- Generate a Launch Kit per post: threads, LinkedIn, Substack Notes, Bluesky, hooks, SEO pack,
  quote cards, carousels, all in the writer's own voice.
- Schedule everything on the Launchpad calendar and resurface evergreen posts.

Every factual statement Notestack generates must trace back to the writer's own sources.

## 2. Kickoff decisions

| Area | Decision |
| --- | --- |
| Backend | FastAPI + SQLAlchemy 2 + Alembic (same stack as blog2video) |
| Worker | arq on Redis (async jobs, progress events over Redis pub/sub, SSE to clients) |
| Database | Postgres 16 + pgvector |
| Frontend | React + Vite + TypeScript, plain CSS with design tokens |
| Renderer | Node service running Remotion (`renderer/`) |
| Storage | Cloudflare R2 (S3 API) for raw HTML, audio, video, stills, compiled DSPy programs |
| Email | Resend, behind a provider interface (mirrors blog2video `EmailService`) |
| Auth | Google sign-in + email 6-digit code signup + password login, JWT access/refresh with `token_version` revocation (mirrors blog2video) |
| LLM | Provider agnostic through DSPy + LiteLLM. Default Z.ai GLM-5.3 (fast tier GLM-5.3-Flash) via its OpenAI compatible endpoint. Embeddings use a separate provider (OpenAI text-embedding-3-small by default). Any LiteLLM model string works by env var. |
| Billing | Three tiers defined in code (`app/services/plans.py`). `BILLING_ENABLED=false` for now: everyone gets the top tier limits free, checkout returns 409, pricing page shows "Free during early access". |
| Blog | Typed `blogPosts.ts` content array, `/blogs` and `/blogs/:slug`, same shape as blog2video |

## 3. Architecture

```
            +-------------------+        SSE / REST        +--------------------+
 browser -->|  frontend (Vite)  |------------------------->|  api (FastAPI)     |
            +-------------------+                          |  auth, notebooks,  |
                     ^                                     |  billing, storage  |
                     | presigned GET                       +---------+----------+
                     |                                               | enqueue (arq)
            +--------+----------+                          +---------v----------+
            | Cloudflare R2     |<-------------------------|  worker (arq)      |
            | notestack-assets  |   put objects            |  ingest, chunk,    |
            +--------+----------+                          |  embed, DSPy, TTS  |
                     ^                                     +---------+----------+
                     | upload final render                           | POST /render
            +--------+----------+   progress callbacks     +---------v----------+
            | renderer (Remotion)|------------------------>|  api /internal/... |
            +-------------------+                          +--------------------+
     Postgres + pgvector (api, worker)        Redis (queue, pub/sub, cache)
```

### 3.1 Storage pipeline (R2)

All binary and large text payloads live in R2. Postgres stores only keys and metadata.

Key layout (`app/services/storage.py::keys`):

```
ws/{workspace_id}/sources/{source_id}/documents/{document_id}/raw.html
ws/{workspace_id}/uploads/{upload_id}/{filename}
ws/{workspace_id}/artifacts/{artifact_id}/{variant}.{ext}      audio, video, stills
ws/{workspace_id}/tts-cache/{sha256(script|voice|settings)}.mp3
system/dspy/{module}/{version}.json                              compiled programs
```

Flows:

1. **Server writes** (ingestion, TTS, compiled programs): worker calls `storage.put_bytes()`.
2. **Browser uploads** (logos, voice consent samples): `POST /api/storage/uploads` returns a presigned
   PUT URL and an `upload_id`; the browser PUTs directly to R2; `POST /api/storage/uploads/{id}/complete`
   verifies with a HEAD request and records size and content type.
3. **Renderer writes**: renderer receives a presigned PUT URL in the render request, so it never holds
   R2 credentials.
4. **Reads**: `GET /api/storage/objects/{key}` checks workspace ownership and 302 redirects to a
   presigned GET (default 1 hour). Public stills (quote cards) can later move to a public bucket with
   a custom domain.

The storage service is an S3 client with R2's endpoint, so MinIO in docker-compose stands in for R2
locally with zero code changes.

### 3.2 LLM layer

`app/llm/provider.py` builds a `dspy.LM` from env:

```
LLM_MODEL=openai/glm-5.3               # any LiteLLM model string
LLM_FAST_MODEL=openai/glm-5.3-flash    # judges, cleanup, cheap passes
LLM_API_BASE=https://api.z.ai/api/paas/v4
LLM_API_KEY=...
LLM_REASONING_EFFORT=low               # low | high | max
EMBEDDING_MODEL=openai/text-embedding-3-small
EMBEDDING_DIM=1024
```

Z.ai considerations baked in:
- OpenAI compatible chat endpoint, so the `openai/` LiteLLM prefix plus `api_base` works.
- GLM-5.x always reasons (thinking cannot be disabled). Every call sends `thinking: enabled` with
  `reasoning_effort=low` by default; modules that benefit (the groundedness judge) ask for
  `main_lm("high")`. Reasoning tokens count against `max_tokens`, so the default is 16K to leave
  room for the structured answer. Z.ai recommends temperature 1.0 for GLM-5.x.
- 1M token context on GLM-5.3 means whole-notebook prompts (summaries, podcast scripts) rarely
  need map-reduce; retrieval is still used for chat to keep citations tight and cost low.
- Z.ai's international API does not offer an embedding model, so embeddings are configured
  separately. The chosen model must accept a `dimensions` parameter so the pgvector column stays
  fixed. Changing `EMBEDDING_DIM` requires a migration and re-embed.
- Token usage from every call is written to `usage_events` (metering from day one).

Swapping to Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini or a local model is only an env change.

### 3.3 Jobs and progress

Every long operation is a row in `jobs` (kind, status, progress, error, cost) plus an arq task.
Workers publish progress to Redis channel `job:{id}`; `GET /api/jobs/{id}/events` streams it as SSE.
No API request blocks for more than a few seconds.

## 4. Data model

Implemented in `backend/app/models` and `alembic/versions/0001_initial.py`.

- users, workspaces, workspace_members, subscriptions
- email_verification_codes, update_emails, update_email_sends
- sources, documents, chunks (pgvector `embedding`), notebooks, notebook_documents
- voice_profiles, voice_consents
- chats, messages, citations
- artifacts, jobs (covers render_jobs and tts_jobs via `kind`), uploads
- calendar_items, tracked_links, engagement_events
- dspy_traces, usage_events

## 5. DSPy program design

See brief Section 6. Signatures live in `backend/app/llm/signatures.py` with Pydantic output models.
Phase 1 ships CleanAndSegment, GroundedAnswer and BuildVoiceProfile. The rest are stubs with typed
signatures so the schema contract is fixed early.

## 6. Plans

| | Free | Writer | Studio |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Price (when billing turns on) | $0 | $19/mo | $49/mo |
| Sources | 1 | 3 | 10 |
| Indexed posts | 50 | 500 | 5,000 |
| Audio overview minutes / mo | 10 | 60 | 240 |
| Video render minutes / mo | 3 | 30 | 120 |
| Launch Kits / mo | 5 | 50 | unlimited |
| Voice profile | yes | yes | yes |
| Voice cloning (with consent) | no | yes | yes |
| Brand kit, no watermark | no | yes | yes |

While `BILLING_ENABLED=false`, every workspace resolves to Studio limits.

## 7. Design system

Strict palette: `#000000`, `#217cff`, `#FFFFFF` and opacity variants only. Tokens in
`frontend/src/styles/tokens.css`. Landing page is a night sky: canvas starfield with slow parallax,
small twinkling sparkles, a soft blue nebula haze and a neon horizon line. `prefers-reduced-motion`
renders a static sky. Logo slot (`<Logo />`) is a white tile that holds the black silhouette mark;
drop the final file at `frontend/public/logo.svg`.

Copy rule: no em dashes anywhere in UI, email or generated output. The generation layer strips them
as a last pass (`app/llm/postprocess.py`).

## 8. Security and privacy

- JWT access (72h) + refresh, revocation by bumping `users.token_version`.
- One auth provider per account for life (Google or email), same as blog2video.
- Verification codes hashed, 10 minute TTL, 5 attempts, 60s resend cooldown.
- R2 keys are always workspace scoped; the API checks ownership before presigning.
- No training on user content without opt-in (`workspaces.training_opt_in`, default false).
- Voice cloning requires a stored consent record with the recorded sample key.