Short links

Some places hide where a visit came from. A link in your X bio, a DM, a newsletter, a YouTube description, a podcast or a QR code often arrives with no referrer, so the visit counts as Direct. A short link fixes that: put pathrail.io/go/yourname there instead of your own address, and every visit it sends is named, counted and joined to the revenue it led to.

Short links are included on every plan.

Make a link

Open Short links in the sidebar. Pick where you will post it (X bio, Newsletter, YouTube description and so on), choose the page it goes to and, if you like, a short name. Leave the name empty for a random one. The page has to be on your site's domain or one of its extra hosts, so the visit is tracked. A link's short name never changes, because it may already be printed or said out loud; you can delete a link, and its old address then stops working.

What a click does

The click goes straight to your page with a few parameters added. Anything already on your page's address, and anything added to the short link, is kept:

https://pathrail.io/go/mybio
  -> https://example.com/?utm_source=X&utm_medium=social&pr_lnk=lnk_...

The tracking script sends that landing address with every hit of the visit. Pathrail reads pr_lnk and gives the whole visit the link's source and channel: X with medium social is Organic Social, Newsletter with medium email is Email, YouTube with medium video is Organic Video. The utm tags are only added where your page's address doesn't already have them, so other tools see the visit too.

What the report counts

Clicks are people only. Link previews (X, Slack, WhatsApp, iMessage fetching the link when it is pasted) and other bots are counted separately and left out. Visitors are the people who reached your site through the link, and signups are those who then sent a signup event. Revenue is first link touch: a visitor's payments in the period go to the link of their first visit through any of your links, when they paid after it. Revenue per click is that revenue divided by clicks.

Links whose source is a social network, such as X, LinkedIn or Reddit, also show on the Social posts page as exact matches, named after the link. A referrer that names the exact post still wins over the link.

On the dashboard

The overview's Where they came from card has a Short links tab, and every report can be filtered to one link: click a link there, or Dashboard next to it on the Short links page. In a filter the link is written as go/yourname.

From the API

The report is available with a read key, like every other report, and so is the link filter and breakdown:

curl "https://pathrail.io/api/v1/stats/links?period=30d" -H "Authorization: Bearer sk_pr_..."
curl -G https://pathrail.io/api/v1/stats/overview --data-urlencode 'filters={"link":"go/mybio"}' -H "Authorization: Bearer sk_pr_..."

Links can be managed from your backend too. Listing needs a read key; creating, editing and deleting need a full key:

curl https://pathrail.io/api/v1/links -H "Authorization: Bearer sk_pr_..."

curl https://pathrail.io/api/v1/links   -H "Authorization: Bearer sk_pr_..." -H "content-type: application/json"   -d '{"destination": "https://example.com/pricing", "slug": "mybio", "source": "X", "medium": "social"}'

curl -X PATCH https://pathrail.io/api/v1/links/lnk_...   -H "Authorization: Bearer sk_pr_..." -H "content-type: application/json"   -d '{"destination": "https://example.com/launch"}'

curl -X DELETE https://pathrail.io/api/v1/links/lnk_... -H "Authorization: Bearer sk_pr_..."

Fields: destination (required), slug (empty for a random one), name, source, medium and campaign. An edit can change everything but the slug. If the key reaches more than one site, pass site_id in the body or the query string. Agents can do the same with the MCP tools list_links and create_link.