Why I’m Building My Own Affiliate Link Manager Using GenAI

I’m a voracious reader. If you follow me on LinkedIn or Twitter, you’ve likely seen me share insights from the books I’m currently devouring.

Usually, I’d drop a link to the book on amazon.in. But there’s a problem: my readers are global. When someone in London or New York clicks that link, they often land on a page that says "Product not available" or forces them to manually search their local store. It’s a friction point that breaks the flow of sharing knowledge.

I wanted a better way. And, to be honest, I wanted to see if I could recover some of those lost affiliate commissions while I was at it.

So, I built Zlynks.

# Why build this now?

Aside from solving the "regional link" problem, I had a deeper motive. As a CTO, I’m fascinated by how software development is morphing in front of our eyes. We talk about "vibe coding". Using AI tools like Claude and Antigravity to move from an idea to execution at breakneck speed.

I wanted to test this vibe firsthand. I wanted to feel the thrill of developing something of my own again. I’ve always been a coder at heart, and there is a unique joy in seeing an idea turn into a functional product in hours, not weeks.

# The Logic and the "How"

The process was surprisingly structured for something called "vibe coding":

1. Reasoning: I sat down with Claude to reason out the core feature set.
2. Structuring: We broke that down into a PRD and high-level features.
3. Execution: I prompted Antigravity (agy) to develop.
4. Iterative Flow: For every feature, I defined the User Acceptance Criteria (UAC). Agy would implement, I would verify, and we’d move to the next.

It’s a collaborative loop where I direct the architecture and the AI handles the heavy lifting. Understanding this shift is critical for my job—and frankly, it’s a lot of fun.

# What is Zlynks?

Zlynks is a smart affiliate link manager designed for high performance.

• Smart Geo-Routing: It detects a visitor’s country in real-time and redirects them to their local Amazon store.
• Auto-Tagging: It swaps in the correct affiliate tags for each region automatically.
• Speed: Built with Go (Fiber) for sub-second 302 redirects.
• Modern UI: The dashboard is a Svelte 5 app using Runes for a reactive, slick interface.
• Reliability: A simple but robust SQLite backend (WAL mode) running on Opalstack.

# The Morphing Craft

Developing Zlynks reaffirmed one thing: the craft of software development is changing, but the core—solving problems and building tools—remains the same. Whether you’re a CTO or a hobbyist, the barrier to entry has never been lower, and the potential for "vibe coding" is just beginning.

I’m now sharing my book links via Zlynks. It’s faster for you, better for my commissions, and it gave me the thrill of the build.

Check it out at zlynks.com.

Link to opalstack is an affiliate link.