Vanity Short-Link Manager

The problem this kills

You printed a postcard with yourbrand.com/spring-sale-2026?utm_source=... on it - or worse, a raw QR code - and the moment it shipped, the landing page changed. Now the link is dead, the UTMs are wrong, and there's no way to fix it without reprinting thousands of pieces. Meanwhile your team keeps hand-typing UTM tags into links (with typos), nobody can tell you how many clicks the flyer got, and the paid link service that solves all this wants a monthly fee per seat.

A short link should be something you own: a clean branded address that you can re-point at any time, that carries the right UTMs automatically, and that counts its own clicks. This plan builds exactly that - yours, on your domain, with a human approving every link before it goes live.

What you'll build

A small, private web app - just for your team - that:

• Lets a teammate request a short link: a destination URL, a memorable slug (/spring-sale), and the UTM tags it should carry.
• Checks the slug is available and reserved, and validates the UTMs before anything is created.
• Warns on duplicates when a new link points at the same destination + campaign as an existing one, so you don't fragment your tracking.
• Makes an admin review and approve each new link - and approve any later change to a live link's destination.
• Serves a fast branded redirect (yourbrand.link/spring-sale -> destination with UTMs attached) once approved.
• Counts clicks with basic bot filtering so the numbers mean something.
• Keeps a redirect history so when you re-point a link, you can see exactly what it used to point at and when it changed.
• Bulk-creates links from a CSV and exports a links + click-stats CSV.

What's inside the Implementation Plan

The plan opens by interviewing you about your business - your short-link domain, your slug naming rules, your standard UTM conventions, who's allowed to request versus approve, your typical and peak link volumes, and your messy edge cases (slug collisions, reserved words, links that need to expire, what counts as a "real" click). It reflects a short tailored spec back to you and waits for your thumbs-up before building a single thing. You get a tool shaped around how your team actually works, not a generic URL shortener.

From there it's a step-by-step build: data model, the request form with slug + UTM validation and duplicate warnings, the admin approval gate, the live redirect with click tracking and bot filtering, editable destinations with full history, the audit trail, CSV bulk-create, and the stats export. Every step ends with a ready-to-paste prompt.

The governance it includes (this is the point)

• Login so only your team can open the tool.
• Row-level security so each organization only ever sees its own links and stats.
• A full audit trail - who requested a link, who approved it, who changed a destination, and when.
• A hard human-in-the-loop approval gate - a link is drafted, but it does not go live and does not redirect until an admin approves the slug, destination, and UTMs. Any later destination change is approved too.
• Duplicate guards - the slug is unique (no two links can ever fight over the same address), and the tool warns when a new link duplicates an existing destination + campaign.

Who it's for

Marketing ops pros who need trackable, editable, branded links - for print, QR codes, and social bios - without buying or learning a paid link-management platform. If you can fill in a destination, a slug, and a few UTM fields, you can run this.

You've got this - paste the first prompt and let's build it.