Customizable URL Shortening Platform

I’m building a full-stack URL shortener that feels as fast and seamless as the big names but lets anyone tailor each link to their brand. When a visitor submits a long URL, the system should create an auto-generated slug that users can immediately overwrite with their own keyword if they wish. Lightning-quick redirection is a must, so please design with caching or other performance techniques in mind.

A clean, mobile-friendly web UI will sit on top of a RESTful (or GraphQL, if you prefer) API. That API needs to expose every core action—create, edit, delete, and look up links—so the service can be integrated into other products later.

Authentication is optional by design: guests can shorten a link in one click, while signed-in users gain a personal dashboard. That dashboard should show analytic snapshots—total clicks, top referrers, basic geodata—and let the owner set or adjust an expiration date. Every short URL should also come with an instantly generated QR code so users can download or embed it anywhere.

To keep things concrete, here’s what I expect you to hand over:

• Production-ready source code (frontend, backend, DB schema, and infrastructure scripts)
• API documentation with sample requests and responses
• Simple, intuitive UI/UX mock-ups implemented exactly as delivered
• Deployment guide for a standard VPS or Docker/Kubernetes stack
• A brief report confirming that link expiration, analytics logging, and QR code generation work as intended

If you have proven experience building high-traffic web services or URL tools, I’d love to see it. Feel free to choose the tech stack you’re fastest with, as long as it remains easy to maintain and scale later on.