Shortwick: a URL shortener with click analytics
Short links with custom back-halves and expiry dates, instant redirects, live click counts, referrer, country and device breakdowns, tags, search and QR codes.
How it's built
Shortwick needed short links that redirect at once, a click count that climbs while the owner watches, breakdowns by referrer, country and device, QR codes and accounts. Each of those is a part of Elements, so the agent spent its 18 minutes on the shortener itself.
What Elements gave the app
- Live click counts. Links are a LiveTable, one view per owner, and a trigger publishes each new count, so the dashboard's numbers climb as visitors click.
- Links edited straight through the view. The dashboard creates, edits, switches off and deletes links through the live view itself. The table checks the owner, validates the url and back-half, and reports a taken back-half on the form.
- Redirects first, counting after. A short link sends the visitor on their way, then stores the click and bumps the count in one transaction. Expired and switched-off links get their own page.
- Analytics that update as clicks arrive. Each click also goes out on a channel, and a link's analytics page adds it to the chart and the referrer, country and device lists over 7, 30 or 90 days.
- QR codes. Each link has a QR code served as a PNG, built with an npm package.
- Data and sessions from SQL. Migrations define the shortener and seed two users, twenty links and three months of clicks, and each owner signs in with a session.
What the project server gave the agent
The project server runs alongside the agent and answers as soon as a file is saved: it type-checks the templates, TypeScript and SQL, applies migrations and reruns the tests, so every question came back right away and the agent kept building.
What shipped
The app type-checks with zero errors and all 32 tests pass. Every page works on desktop and phone.
Run it yourself
- 1 Sign up
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- 2 Install and run the demo One prompt to paste into your agent.
The prompt
What Claude was given to build this app.
Build a URL shortener named shortwick with click analytics. - Accounts. Shorten a url, with an optional custom back-half and expiry date. - Short links redirect instantly. - Each link's analytics: clicks over time, top referrers, countries, and devices. - Tag links, search them, and turn a link off. - A QR code for each link, downloadable as PNG. Seed two users with twenty links and three months of click history. Show the seeded logins on the sign-in page. Click counts update in real time.