`price_cents` stays NOT NULL and gains a default of 80.00. Where the model suggests a price the worker writes it onto the item; where it does not, the default stands.
This is cheaper to build than the nullable design it replaces — the column's type is unchanged, so the fifteen files that read `price_cents`, the cart and the checkout among them, keep working untouched, and the migration adds a default and nothing else.
It also gives up a guarantee. The storefront can now be reached by a price the admin never chose, so the protection moves out of the schema and into the review queue, where it is weaker. 80.00 is a plausible number rather than an obvious sentinel, so a default left unnoticed sells the item instead of announcing itself the way "$0.00" would. `price_source` is added to make that legible: the queue labels a price as coming from the model, the default, or the admin, and marks anything unconfirmed as such at the point of publishing. Publishing unconfirmed remains allowed — that is the decision taken — but it is stated rather than silent.
Publishing still happens only from the queue, and the notification email still carries no publish button.
Ref #220
A named, revocable link lets someone without an account send in photos of one item plus a note; a background worker drafts the listing; the admin is emailed and publishes it deliberately from a review queue.
Most of the lifecycle already exists and is reused rather than rebuilt: `pending` has been the unpublished state since #90 and is already excluded from every public query, the upload path already validates magic bytes against a three-type allowlist, mail already has editable templates and an allowlist guard, and node-cron is already the background-work pattern. What is new is a way in for someone with no admin account, the first LLM integration in this codebase, and somewhere to review a draft.
The design turns on one invariant: nothing reaches the storefront at a price a model guessed. The suggested price lives on the draft and never on the item, the email carries no publish button, and the publish path refuses an item with no price. That is also why `price_cents` becomes nullable rather than defaulting to zero — a sentinel that formats as "$0.00" is the same class of quiet failure as `DEMO_MODE` once being "demo unless the value is exactly false", and nullability makes the compiler enumerate all fifteen call sites instead.
Ref #220
bermudalamb