Functional requirements (FR)

• Accept media uploads or source references and track each asset through its processing lifecycle.
• Resume interrupted transfers and expose progress, validation, processing, and failure status.
• Make completed media discoverable and deliverable to authorized clients in supported formats or qualities.
• Support lifecycle actions such as retry, cancel, delete, or retention according to the prompt.

Non-functional requirements (NFR)

• Support large files, unreliable networks, bursty ingest, and efficient bandwidth use.
• Define processing latency, playback or download startup, and availability targets.
• Protect content and user data with access controls, integrity checks, and retention policies.
• Scale storage and processing capacity while making failures, backlog, and cost visible.

Principal-level discussion

• Define the scale, success measures, and operational ownership before committing to an architecture.
• Compare at least two viable approaches and explain the trade-offs, migration path, and failure behavior.
• Identify the riskiest assumptions and how you would validate them with data or a staged rollout.