Shortwick: a URL shortener with click analytics

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.