Productivity · $8/mo

Can I vibe code Bitly?

Shorten, brand, and track links.

🟢Yes — build itest. one sitting

A URL shortener is a key-value store and a redirect. The one genuinely useful paid feature — click analytics — is a single extra table and a counter. On a custom short domain this is both cheaper and more private than the paid plan, and it is a first-week project.

The one-shot prompt
Build a personal URL shortener I can host on my own short domain. Features: a password-protected admin page to create short slugs pointing at long URLs (auto-generate a slug or let me pick one); a fast redirect route that 301s a slug to its target; and a click log that records timestamp, referrer, and coarse device type per hit. Add a /stats/[slug] page showing total clicks and a 30-day sparkline. Use Next.js App Router with a hosted Postgres or SQLite, keep redirects edge-fast, and don't store any personal data beyond coarse analytics.
Paste into Claude Code, Codex, or your agent of choice — then steer. Learn the moves in Prompt Engineering.
What you build

A short-link service on your own domain that redirects slugs to long URLs and logs each click for a simple stats page.

What you give up
  • Their brand-name recognition on the link (you use your own domain instead)
  • Bulk link management UI and team seats
  • Advanced analytics like geo/device breakdowns unless you build them
  • QR-code generation and campaign tooling on higher tiers
Why people still pay

Marketing teams want shared dashboards, seats, and the trusted bit.ly brand on links they hand to clients — the infra is trivial but the workflow around it isn't free to rebuild.

brandconvenience
Related
Actually build it

A prompt is the first move, not the whole game. Course 01 teaches you to take a prompt like this one to a shipped, working app — reviewing, correcting, and steering the agent the whole way.

Start Course 01 →