Link Expander / Redirect Chain

Input Contract

Provide url, or link as an alias, as an http or https URL up to 2048 characters. If no scheme is supplied, https is assumed. Optional max_hops may be set from 1 to 20 and defaults to 10. Only standard HTTP and HTTPS ports are supported, and private or reserved network targets are blocked.

Output Contract

Returns normalized_url, final_url, hop_count, redirect_count, terminal_status_code, terminated_reason, verdict, summary, and a chain array. Each hop includes URL, status code, reason phrase, redirect target, duration, selected headers, payload sample metadata, and extracted page metadata such as title, description, canonical, robots, Open Graph, Twitter, and meta refresh values.

Errors

Empty URL, invalid URL, unsupported scheme, embedded credentials, unsupported port, DNS resolution failure, private or reserved network target, request failure, invalid Location header, or redirect loop. Reaching max_hops returns a warning with the partial chain.

Auth and Limits

Anonymous JSON API for initial rollout. Use the /api/v1 endpoint for agents; browser form submissions remain protected by CSRF and reCAPTCHA.

JSON API uses the standard API throttle. Each request may perform up to max_hops outbound HTTP requests, so agents should keep max_hops low unless a longer chain is expected.

Examples

Requests

GET /api/v1/redirect-chain?url=https://bit.ly/example

POST /api/v1/link-expander {"url":"https://example.com","max_hops":5}

Responses

{"skill":"redirectchain","normalized_url":"https://short.example/abc","final_url":"https://example.com/landing","redirect_count":1,"chain":[{"hop":1,"status_code":301,"redirect_to":"https://example.com/landing"},{"hop":2,"status_code":200,"metadata":{"title":"Example landing page"}}]}