Short URLs in the Frontmatter

2026-05-12#tech

For some reason before 2020 I thought I needed a business card. I made it an odd size so it stuck out in a stack. The front was a JSON object and my vismon on the back. Since it was a smaller card I could only fit { name, email, url } and the URL had to be short. It pointed to a GitHub gist, and if someone could figure that out they could call me. Never got a call.

The idea

Add a shortSlug to the post frontmatter:

---
title: Replacing Enterprise Publishing for $1 a Month
shortSlug: ep1
---

At build time, collect every shortSlug across all posts and generate a CloudFront function:

const SLUGS = {
  ep1: "/posts/enterprise-publishing-for-a-dollar",
  bts: "/posts/building-the-tube",
};

function handler(event) {
  const uri = event.request.uri.slice(1);
  const target = SLUGS[uri];
  if (target) {
    return {
      statusCode: 301,
      statusDescription: "Moved Permanently",
      headers: { location: { value: target } },
    };
  }
  return event.request;
}

Deploy

Why CloudFront functions

CloudFront Functions run at the edge before the request hits S3. The redirect happens in under a millisecond, globally, and the free tier covers two million invocations a month.

The deploy is the insert.

The build step

The existing build script reads frontmatter for every post. One more pass to collect shortSlug values and write the function source to a file. The deploy workflow uploads it via the AWS CLI or CDK.

const slugMap = posts
  .filter((p) => p.shortSlug)
  .reduce((acc, p) => ({ ...acc, [p.shortSlug]: `/posts/${p.slug}` }), {});

What you get

  • Short URLs that belong to your domain
  • No monthly subscription
  • No link rot — the redirect lives in the same repo as the post
  • The file is the spec — the post declares its own short URL
  • Works in print, on slides, in email — anywhere you want a short URL that's easy to type

The slug is part of the post. The post is source code. The redirect is compiled output. Same model as everything else.

← All posts