SlugShrink

SlugShrink is a self-hosted URL shortener with a dashboard for managing domains and redirects, plus a public redirect server for resolving short links.

Tech stack

• Backend: Go
• API: ConnectRPC (Connect over HTTP/1.1 + h2c)
• Frontend: SvelteKit (Svelte)

Auth modes

SlugShrink supports several different modes for authenticating users. They can be configured in the frontend.

• Authless: No login; all requests are treated as admin.
• Basic: Password login with a JWT cookie (auth_token) signed by JWT_SECRET. Tokens expire after 1 hour.
• Proxy: Trusts upstream headers for user/group info; groups are matched for permissions. Make sure your application is only available behind the proxy. Requests that do not have the headers set will be allowed as normal user.

If you have locked yourself out (e.g. set Basic Auth but forgot password) you can remove the first record in the auth_config database table to reset it to authless.

User permissions

• User: Create and view redirects; edit and delete only redirects they created.
• Superuser: Create, view, update, and delete all redirects.
• Admin: Everything a superuser can do, plus manage domains and configure auth mode.
• Proxy mode note: To let users edit/delete only their own redirects, the user_id_header must contain a unique user identifier. You are responsible for ensuring its correctness.

Development helpers

The dev/ folder contains a Traefik setup that forwards to the local frontend (http://localhost:5173) and injects proxy-auth headers. It exposes multiple entrypoints (ports 8091–8094) to simulate different users by setting X-Proxy-Groups and X-Proxy-User.

Deployment

• Docker Compose: see compose.example.yaml for a Postgres-backed setup.

The dashboard is served on port 8080, and the server doing the actual redirects on 8081.

Environment variables

Variable	Options / Default	Description
DB_TYPE	sqlite (default), postgres, mysql, mariadb	Database driver selection.
DB_PATH	local.db (default); Docker image sets /data/sqlite.db	SQLite database file path (used when DB_TYPE=sqlite).
DB_HOST	required for postgres, mysql, mariadb	Database host.
DB_PORT	required for postgres, mysql, mariadb	Database port.
DB_USER	required for postgres, mysql, mariadb	Database user.
DB_PASSWORD	required for postgres, mysql, mariadb	Database password.
DB_NAME	required for postgres, mysql, mariadb	Database name.
DB_SSLMODE	false (default)	Enable ssl for the database connection.
JWT_SECRET	required for Basic auth	Secret key used to sign login JWTs.
LOG_LEVEL	info (default), debug, warn, error	Logging verbosity.