Share links — signed, expiring resource + collection URLs

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Context

Game studios collaborate with people who do not have accounts on their Artist Alley instance: contractors, freelancers, publishers, IP owners, QA partners, agencies, festival juries, press embargoes. The post-detail permission model (capability + team membership) does not solve “send this post / this collection to a publisher for sign-off, with the link expiring after 14 days and revoking on a single click.”

First-class share links for both resources and collections — with password gating, expiry, per-link access scope, and usage tracking — are table stakes in existing DAM tooling. The audit (2026-05-30) flagged share links as the single most-impactful gap on the Artist Alley roadmap — every studio hits this within the first week.

Decision

Add Phase 1.26 — Share links — as a distinct, first-class feature sitting alongside the federation share-with-anyone path (Phase 1.18.B-14) which is a cluster-of-instances path. Share links are the single-instance public-URL path. The two coexist: share links are the fast turn-on for external collaboration, federation is the durable multi-instance topology.

URL shape

GET /share/{token}

{token} is a URL-safe random 32-byte identifier. The token is NOT the secret — the share-link record on the server is the secret. We do NOT sign the URL with HMAC; the database lookup is the source of truth on validity. This is simpler than signed URLs, supports immediate revocation, and trivially supports “show me all my active links.”

Scope vocabulary

A share link binds:

Target — a single asset, a single post, or a collection.
Scope — one of view, comment, annotate, download. Scopes are additive (a download link implies view).
Expiry — optional nbf and exp timestamps. Default exp is now() + 14d; no default nbf.
Password — optional Argon2id hash. When present, the share page shows a password gate before the target.
Max uses — optional integer ceiling on the number of views.
Creator — the user who minted the link; auditable.
Audit trail — every fetch (with IP, user-agent, password result, scope satisfied) is logged for the link’s lifetime.

Revocation

Single button in the admin / account UI invalidates the token. Anyone holding the URL gets a 410 Gone immediately. No grace period, no client caching — the binary checks the share-link table on every request to /share/{token}.

Storage backend tie-in

Downloads from a share link go through a short-lived presigned URL on the storage backend (S3 / R2 / B2) so the binary does not have to proxy gigabytes. Filesystem backend serves the file directly with the appropriate ACL headers.

Federation interaction

Share links live on the issuing instance. If a federated peer surfaces the underlying asset, the peer does NOT inherit the share link — the link is bound to the issuing host. This keeps the security model simple: one revoke button, one host of record.

Anti-scraping / rate limit

Share-link requests are rate-limited per IP + per token. A burst that looks like enumeration trips a soft block (CAPTCHA challenge or hard deny depending on admin config).

Consequences

Positive

Solves the single most-requested external-collaboration use case without forcing accounts.
Same database mechanism gates resources, posts, and collections — one shape, one revocation surface.
Built-in usage tracking surfaces “this link has been opened 47 times by 6 distinct IPs” so studios can see real-world reach.
Password + expiry + max-uses are all optional, so most links are cheap to mint.
No HMAC signing → no key rotation problem, no signed-URL leak risk.

Negative

DB lookup on every share-link request means caching at the edge is harder. Mitigation: cache the resolution (target + scope + auth needed) in cache.Registry with a short TTL and immediate invalidation on revoke.
A share link with download scope on a 50 GB video does need presigned-URL plumbing per storage backend. Storage interface adds one method: PresignDownload(ctx, key, ttl).

Alternatives considered

Signed-URL only (no DB row). Smaller infra footprint but no revocation, no usage tracking, no password gating, no max-use ceiling. Rejected — these are all features studios specifically want.
Use only federation share-with-anyone (1.18.B-14). Federation requires the recipient run an Artist Alley instance. Game studios share with publishers and agencies who will never self-host. The single-host share link is what fits the actual use case.
JWT-encoded share tokens. Self-contained validity but again no revocation. Rejected.

Reference

Phase 1.26 in docs/roadmap.md.
Related: federation share-with-anyone — Phase 1.18.B-14.
License gating: share-link creation respects per-tier asset-cap and active-seat limits via the tangled-derivation model in ADR 0017.