Shorty

One-page, deterministic GitHub URL shortener that encodes/decode raw/blob links entirely in the browser using the Unix dictionary and TikToken subword pieces.

Highlights

• Static + client-side – drop index.html and words.txt anywhere (GitHub Pages, selfdotsend.com, etc.) and it works without a server.
• Deterministic encoding – raw/blob URLs become readable slugs like owner/repo/file, with dictionary hits compressed into two-character markers. Decoding mirrors the process so hashes can be shared safely.
• Smart UX – copy-friendly result cards, loader banner reused for hash-based redirects, and the decode field accepts either a shortcode or a full URL (https://host#shortcode).
• Auto redirect – visiting /shorty#whatever loads the dictionary/tokenizer and automatically redirects after a short countdown, showing the same overlay used by manual decodes.

Usage

1. Serve the folder (e.g., python -m http.server from the repo root) or open index.html directly.
2. Paste a raw GitHub URL (or a regular github.com/.../blob/... link) into Raw/Direct GitHub URL and click Shorten URL.
3. Copy the shortcode or shareable URL using the inline buttons. Opening that URL (with the hash) on any host running this page will download the original file.
4. Paste a shortcode or a full https://host#shortcode link into the Shortcode or URL input to reverse the process. The decoded panel provides copy buttons for both the raw and GitHub blob variants.

Development Notes

• words.txt is the Unix dictionary plus a few project-specific tokens. The script loads it, builds an index per first letter, and tracks the longest word to keep decomposition efficient.
• TikToken (js-tiktoken@1.0.21) is imported via CDN. We wait for both the dictionary and tokenizer before enabling the interface so we never produce/handle incompatible hashes.
• No bundler/tooling is required. Edit index.html, refresh, done.

Lightweight decoder

Need redirects without the UI? Drop <script src="embed-shorty.js"></script> on any page in this folder (or copy the file alongside words.txt). Visiting https://selfdotsend.com/#shortcode triggers the same dictionary-based decoder and immediately redirects to the raw GitHub file; https://selfdotsend.com/?shortcode handles the box-drawing variant.

Planned Extensions

• Additional custom dictionary pages for frequently encoded owners/repos.
• Optional branch detection beyond main/master.