Vibe Coding LINO: How I Co‑Created a Bitly-Style Plugin With AI
Summary
This article showcases how AI, specifically ChatGPT, can be used to quickly co-create a custom WordPress plugin that mimics Bitly's link shortening features, all driven by conversational prompts rather than formal specs. The author goes through the iterative design and coding steps, using natural language to shape functionality and UX while leveraging AI to handle the boilerplate, resulting in a self-hosted link shortener with admin controls and stats. Salesforce professionals can see this as a model for how AI-assisted development could speed up custom tooling or integrations within their orgs, embracing iterative design with AI as a pair programmer. The approach highlights practical AI use beyond coding snippets, extending to product naming, icon design, and UX refinement.
Takeaways
- Use AI to rapidly prototype and build custom plugins or tools from rough prompts.
- Iteratively refine UX and features with natural language prompts and AI feedback.
- Leverage AI for non-coding tasks like naming and icon design to enhance branding.
- Treat AI as a fast, pedantic pair programmer for building and automating workflows.
- Automate repetitive build tasks with AI-generated scripts for efficient deployment.
This is not a story about clean architecture diagrams, carefully written specs, or rock-solid requirements. This is a story about vibe coding . I had an idea stuck in my head: “ What if my own WordPress blog could behave a bit like Bitly? ” During my Nerd @ Work Lab Podcast I’m displaying long urls, I wanted something branded to shorten links at no cost. I didn’t want yet another SaaS, another dashboard, another API key. I just wanted my blog to: create short, memorable links redirect them reliably give me some basic stats all inside the CMS I already use So I did what any nerd with an idea and a phone does: I opened ChatGPT. TLDR; Jump to the GitHub repository https://github.com/enreeco/lino-shortlinks-wordpress-plugin . Step 1 – The Terrible Phone Prompt That Started It All I wasn’t at my desk. I wasn’t in “serious dev mode”. I was just poking my phone and typed this, more or less in one breath: is it possibile to create a wordpress plugin with “bit.