How it works

CaptureFlow has two halves that talk to each other over HTTPS:

• The desktop recorder (apps/desktop) — an Electron app that captures your screen and webcam locally.
• The web backend (apps/web) — a Next.js app on Cloudflare Workers that stores recordings, serves share pages, and powers the dashboard.

The recording → link pipeline

┌──────────────┐   streaming upload    ┌─────────────────────┐
│ Desktop app  │ ────────────────────► │  Cloudflare Worker  │
│ (record)     │   (chunks while you   │  (Next.js / OpenNext)│
└──────────────┘    are still recording)└──────────┬──────────┘
       │                                            │
       │ stop ─► link ready                         ▼
       ▼                                  ┌──────────────────┐
┌──────────────┐    share link    ┌──────►│  R2 (video/poster)│
│   Viewer     │ ◄────────────────│       │  D1 (metadata)    │
│  (browser)   │   plays from CDN │       └──────────────────┘
└──────────────┘                  └── share viewer page

1. Capture — the recorder uses native macOS helpers (screen, window detection, cursor tracking) to grab frames, compositing the webcam bubble and smoothed cursor on top.
2. Stream while recording — instead of waiting for you to finish, the app uploads the recording in parts (a multipart upload) as it's being made. By the time you stop, most of the bytes are already in storage.
3. Finalize — on stop, the upload is finalized, a poster image is generated, and a row is written to the database. You immediately get a share URL.
4. Serve — viewers open the share page; the video and poster are served from R2 over your CDN domain, and the metadata (title, visibility, reactions, comments) comes from the database.

What stores what

Concern	Where it lives
Video files, poster images, snap PNGs	R2 (object storage), under videos/, posters/, snaps/
Recording & snap metadata, users, workspaces, reactions, comments, quotas	D1 (SQLite at the edge)
Auth sessions	Signed by Better Auth (BETTER_AUTH_SECRET)
Static dashboard / share assets	Served by the Worker's ASSETS binding

Housekeeping

Two scheduled jobs keep storage tidy (Cloudflare Cron Triggers, wired in worker.ts):

• Hourly — garbage-collect abandoned multipart uploads (recordings that were started but never finalized).
• Daily — a retention sweep that removes content past your retention policy.

Next: Install the app.