Overview
DevLink shortens links and then tells you what happened to them. Referrers, geography, and clicks over time, per link.
The redirect path is the whole engineering problem. It has to feel instant while still recording an analytics event, which means the write can never sit in front of the redirect.
- Role
- Sole engineer and designer.
- Year
- 2025
- Stack
- Next.jsTypeScriptMongoDBTailwind CSS
Engineering
The decisions that mattered.
- 01
Redirect first, record after
The response goes out before analytics are persisted, so a slow write can never add latency to somebody else's click.
- 02
Pre-aggregated time series
Clicks are rolled up on write instead of scanned on read, which keeps the dashboard fast as a link piles up history.
Design decisions
Why it looks and behaves the way it does.
I designed this as well as built it. These are the interface calls I made and the reasoning behind each one.
Shortening is one field and one button
The primary action needed no onboarding, no options panel and no account wall in front of it. Everything else on the page sits below that input.
One chart carries the dashboard
Clicks over time answers the question people came with. Referrer and geography sit under it as tables. Six charts would look more impressive and tell you less.
Outcomes
What shipped.
- Redirect latency unaffected by analytics writes
- Dashboard performance flat as click volume grows