Random slugs still have human readers

Random slugs are for the moments when the keyword does not matter.

You paste a long URL. lnk chooses the slug. You keep moving. The catch is that a random slug may still be read from a slide, typed from a badge, dictated over a call, pasted into a ticket, or compared in a screenshot.

In vanityURLs 3.x, random slug generation is configurable. Existing instances can get it by following the upgrade workflow, including npm run upgrade.

The default optimizes for the human in that loop.

Use A Readable Alphabet

The default alphabet is:

34789abcdefghjkmnpqrstvwxy

It avoids characters that are easy to confuse in common fonts or spoken instructions. There is no 0, 1, 2, 5, 6, i, l, or o. It also stays lowercase so abc and ABC cannot become two different links by accident.

Mixed-case alphabets create more combinations in fewer characters. That can be useful at high volume, but URL paths are case-sensitive in practice and handled as path data under RFC 3986. A mixed-case slug is harder to dictate and easier to mistype.

The tradeoff is density. A readable alphabet needs more characters than a dense alphabet for the same collision space. vanityURLs chooses readability by default and leaves density configurable.

Keep The Choice In Git

The relevant custom/v8s-site-config.json section is:

{
  "links": {
    "random_slug_length": 3,
    "random_slug_alphabet": "34789abcdefghjkmnpqrstvwxy",
    "tag_random_slug_lengths": {
      "training": 4,
      "debug": 2
    }
  }
}

The global random_slug_length is what lnk uses when you omit the slug:

./scripts/lnk https://github.com/houba/styleGuide

Override it for one command when the link needs more room:

./scripts/lnk https://github.com/houba/styleGuide --random-slug-length 5

Or let a tag choose the length:

./scripts/lnk https://github.com/vanityURLs/code/issues/4 --tags debug

Let Purpose Set Length

Tag-specific lengths let the link purpose choose the slug shape.

training links may live longer and be read by real people, so 4 characters is reasonable. debug links are short-lived and local to an investigation, so 2 characters can be acceptable.

Configure those defaults with:

./scripts/lnk tag set training --random-slug-length 4
./scripts/lnk tag set debug --random-slug-length 2

When a link has multiple tags with configured lengths, lnk uses the shortest matching tag length. The most restrictive tag wins. If one link needs different behavior, the explicit command-line value wins.

The goal is not one universal alphabet. The goal is a visible decision: short enough to use, readable enough to survive humans, and stored where reviewers can see it.