golinks 1.0.0

A local go links redirect service for URL shortcuts

Golinks

A simple local HTTP redirect service that turns short URLs like go/github into full URLs.

Installation

Install manually

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/yourusername/golinks.git
cd golinks

# Run the install script
./install

# Edit the config
vim ~/.config/golinks/config.json

How it works

The ./install script automates the entire setup:

1. Installs the Python package using uv
2. Adds 127.0.0.1 go to your /etc/hosts file (with sudo permission)
3. Sets up port forwarding from port 80 to 8888 using pfctl (macOS) or iptables (Linux), so you can use go/shortcut instead of go:8888/shortcut
4. Sets up a LaunchAgent (macOS) or systemd service (Linux) to run the server at startup
5. Starts the golinks server immediately on port 8888

Once installed, golinks runs a lightweight HTTP server that reads shortcuts from a JSON config file at ~/.golinks/config.json and redirects http://go/shortcut to the configured destination URL. The config file is hot-reloaded, so you can add new shortcuts without restarting the server.