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Document sharing on Amazon S3

S3Share

Documents and their attachments live in Amazon S3. Territories, access levels and roles decide what each person sees, right down to which folders appear in the menu.

  1. Draft
  2. Published
  3. Archived
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S3Share dashboard

One place for shared documents

A document is a title, formatted text with pictures, and any number of attached files. The text lives in the database; every attachment goes straight to an Amazon S3 bucket over a signed link and comes back the same way. There is no file server to run and nothing to copy between offices.

Everything is scoped. A document belongs to one territory and one folder, carries an access level, and moves through a status of its own. Who may open, edit, archive or delete it follows from those three facts and from the role the person was given.

How it was built

  • 4 hrsArchitecture and schema
  • 20 hrsVibe coding
  • 24 hrsTotal build

S3Share started from an existing SkyNet design rather than a blank page, so the architecture and schema took four hours to adapt instead of weeks to invent. From there, 100% of the implementation code was generated by AI (Claude): the whole application, start to finish, in twenty-four hours.

Four hours adapting a design that already worked, twenty hours of vibe coding, and nothing typed by hand.

Modules

  • Dashboard

    What is happening across your territories: documents visible to you, what you authored, storage used, reads and downloads over thirty days, a fourteen-day activity chart and a live feed.

  • Documents

    A folder browser with search, sorting, paging and CSV export, and an editor for title, formatted text, pictures, access level and status. Attachments upload and download straight to S3.

  • Report

    The audit report. Every change, read and download is logged: who, what, which territory and when. It answers "who has seen this file".

  • Configuration

    Users with two-factor sign-in by email, roles and permissions, the page registry, territories mapped to bucket folders, and options for S3, file types, size limits and Trash.

The menu is built from your permissions

Scroll sideways to see the whole diagram.

Three things decide what one person sees Territory membership Which territories you belong to, and whether you manage them Access level 1–10 Set per territory. You see a document when your level reaches its level Role Which pages and which buttons are available to you at all Your view built on every request The territory tree Only your territories. A subfolder appears only when it holds something you can open The document list Published and archived at or below your level, plus your own drafts The buttons on the page Edit, copy, move, archive, delete — each one checked again on the server before it runs Folders nest up to seven levels deep. A document belongs to one territory, and can be copied to another. Nothing is hidden in the browser only — every action is checked on the server before it runs.

Most systems show everyone the same navigation and refuse the click. S3Share builds the navigation itself out of what you are allowed to reach, so a folder you cannot open is not greyed out. It is simply not there.

Drafts are private to their author and to the territory's managers. A manager sees everything in the territory and may move, archive, unarchive and delete any document in it, and create and rename folders. Everyone else works at their own level: a document is edited only by the person who wrote it, though anyone who can see it can take a copy.

The life of a document

Scroll sideways to see the whole diagram.

Draft Visible to the author and to the territory's managers only Published Publishing sets version 1. Every later save by the author raises the version Archived Frozen and read-only. Still visible at your level, and still copyable author manager manager unarchives Trash Restored to where it was, or removed for good deleting from any status drops the document into Trash, when Trash is switched on

Trash is a holding area rather than a stage: a deleted document goes back to the status it had before, or is removed for good. Whether Trash is used at all is an option in Configuration, along with the maximum file size and the file types people may attach.

Pricing

The software itself is free. You pay only for getting it standing up and keeping it healthy. And your own Amazon S3 usage, which goes to AWS.

  • The softwareFree

    S3Share itself costs nothing. No per-seat licensing, no subscription, no usage tiers.

  • What you getOn request

    One email and you have everything: the SQL Server database and the installation files, ready to deploy against your own S3 bucket. No forms, no signup.

  • Installation and maintenanceOptional

    Installation is a small one-time fee, and ongoing maintenance costs very little. Already have an IT team? They can install and run it themselves, with no ongoing fee at all.

Request S3Share by email

License

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