Client approvals for small design and video studios
Client approvals for small design and video studios is a SaaS idea for design, branding and video studios with 2 to 20 people, priced to test at $49 a month per studio, unlimited clients. Feedback arrives by email, chat and calls, so the team works from the wrong version. With it, studios share drafts, clients comment on the exact spot, and every approval is on record.
. A starting point we wrote, not market research: run the 7-day test before you build.
What problem does it solve?
Feedback arrives by email, chat and calls, so the team works from the wrong version. When a client later says they never approved something, there is no clear record.
Why now: Studios produce more versions, faster, with AI-assisted design and editing, which means more rounds of feedback to manage.
What do they use today?
Most studios send drafts as file attachments or shared folder links and gather feedback wherever the client replies. Someone on the team copies the comments into a document, and approval is a quick yes in a chat.
How does it work?
A designer uploads a draft and sends the client a link. The client pins each comment to an exact spot on the image or a moment in the video, and the studio gets an email each time. A new version goes up beside the last one for comparison, and the approve button records who approved and when.
What goes in the first version?
- Upload a draft and share a link with the client
- Comments pinned to a spot on an image or a moment in a video
- Versions side by side
- An approve button that records who and when
- An email when a client comments
Who pays, and how much?
- Who pays
- Design, branding and video studios with 2 to 20 people
- Price to test
- $49 a month per studio, unlimited clients
A flat price per studio, with unlimited clients, suits a small team juggling many projects, since the bill never changes when a new client joins. It replaces the email threads and shared folders the studio uses now.
How to test it in 7 days
- 1Ask in r/graphic_design and r/editors how people track client approvals.
- 2Interview five studio owners about the last project that slipped because of feedback.
- 3Offer to set up one live project for three studios.
Where to find the first customers
- r/graphic_design and r/editors
- Design communities on Slack and Discord
- Agency owner groups on LinkedIn
What are the risks?
- Review tools exist, so the angle is price and simplicity.
- Video files are big, so price storage in from the start.
How to build it on shipanysaas
5 of the parts it needs are already in the kit. Get the kit, open it in Claude Code, Codex or Cursor, and paste the starting prompt.
- Already in the kit
- Sign-in
- Teams and roles
- Billing
- Emails
- In-app notifications
- You build
- File uploads with versions
- Comments pinned to image spots and video moments
- Approval records
See the starting prompt
You are in a fresh copy of the shipanysaas starter kit, a pnpm and Turborepo monorepo: the Next.js web app is in apps/web and the Supabase database, with its migrations, in apps/web/supabase. Help me build the first version of Client approvals for small design and video studios. Read AGENTS.md first, then the AGENTS.md in every folder you work in: the kit's rules there win over your defaults. When a skill in .agents/skills (also in .claude/skills and .cursor/skills) matches a task, use it. ## The product - What it does: Studios share drafts, clients comment on the exact spot, and every approval is on record. - Who pays: Design, branding and video studios with 2 to 20 people - Their problem: Feedback arrives by email, chat and calls, so the team works from the wrong version. When a client later says they never approved something, there is no clear record. - Price to test: $49 a month per studio, unlimited clients (a plan in apps/web/config/billing.config.ts) ## Build only this first version 1. Upload a draft and share a link with the client 2. Comments pinned to a spot on an image or a moment in a video 3. Versions side by side 4. An approve button that records who and when 5. An email when a client comments ## Already in the kit: reuse it, never rebuild it - Sign-in: email and password or Google, plus magic links and passkeys you can switch on - Teams and roles: team accounts with members, roles and invitations - Billing: Stripe or Lemon Squeezy subscriptions, per seat or usage-based, and one-off payments - Emails: transactional email through Resend or Nodemailer - In-app notifications: a notifications bell in the web app ## New code it needs - File uploads with versions - Comments pinned to image spots and video moments - Approval records ## How to work 1. Plan first: list the database tables (with row-level security, so each team only sees its own rows), the pages and the server actions for the first feature. Then stop and wait for my OK. 2. Build one feature at a time with the kit's own UI and form components, with a migration for every schema change and user-facing text in the translation files. 3. After each feature, run the verification steps in AGENTS.md, fix what they find, and tell me what you built and what comes next. ## Rules - Ask me before you add a dependency, delete a file, or change sign-in, billing or the admin panel. - Leave the parts of the kit this product doesn't use as they are. Done when every first-version feature works for a signed-in team and the AGENTS.md checks pass.
Guides for the parts it uses
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