Codex Archive System V3.10 Media Handoff Notes

v3.10 extends Codex Archive System v3.9 Orientation Clarity Notes. Use v3.9 for public-facing clarity and v3.10 for current media handoff reliability across intake, publish, and gallery delivery.

v3.10 is the media-handoff release.

Operator value prop:

• A fieldlog with phone-native HEIC source can now move from inbox/drop to local publish without the operator having to manually diagnose broken cards, broken lightboxes, or mislabeled camera exports.

Work chunks and wins:

1. Finalize now owns the media handoff Value prop: Approval can trigger one reliable publish lane instead of a markdown handoff plus a separate image side quest.

   • Added a publish-time media step that reads source-to-public mappings directly from the ready draft.
   • Wired scripts/finalize-approved-ready.mjs to prepare mapped assets before promotion, reconciliation, cleanup, validation, and build.
   • Kept the operator boundary narrow: review, confirm, and let the pipeline finish the rest.

2. HEIC and HEIF are treated as first-class intake reality Value prop: Camera-native stills no longer arrive as browser-broken ghosts just because the source filename lied.

   • Detect actual media format from file signatures instead of trusting the extension.
   • Normalize HEIC and HEIF delivery to .jpg assets for the public web path.
   • Remove stale sibling files with the same basename but the wrong extension so old broken targets stop lingering in astro/public.

3. Fieldlog intake now plans the real delivery artifact Value prop: The draft itself carries a truthful handoff map, which makes later publish automation possible.

   • Moved media-format detection into shared utilities so intake and publish agree about what a file actually is.
   • Fieldlog ready drafts now plan /media/... targets from actual bytes, not optimistic suffixes.
   • Intake notes remain the handoff contract until promotion strips them from canonical publish state.

4. Image handling and object delivery now agree about trust Value prop: The same object can survive card preview, object page, and gallery expansion without separate repair steps.

   • HEIC-heavy fieldlogs now arrive in a browser-safe format before Astro computes image metadata and preview framing.
   • Publish delivery is less fragile when a drop item mixes real JPGs with mislabeled phone exports.
   • The proving specimen for this pass was return-of-the-joker, where broken card previews exposed the handoff gap.

No schema migration is required for v3.10. No new object type is introduced in v3.10.

Implementation note:

• v3.10 is a trust-widening release. The point is not just better image conversion; it is that the approval handoff now owns the boring but critical work that used to fall between draft planning and public delivery.