Slug rules

Slugs are the part of a share URL you choose — the q1-report in https://anchorify.io/alice/q1-report. They are validated on every publish.

The regex

^[a-z0-9](?:[a-z0-9-]{0,58}[a-z0-9])?$

In plain language:

1 to 60 characters total
Lowercase letters (a–z), digits (0–9), and hyphens (-) only
Cannot start or end with a hyphen
Single-character slugs are allowed (e.g. a, 7)
No underscores, no uppercase, no dots, no slashes, no spaces, no punctuation, no unicode

Valid examples

q1-report
notes-2026
a
cardinal-heating-audit
slug-with-many-hyphens-here
geology-week3

Invalid examples

Slug	Why it fails
`Bad_Slug!`	uppercase + underscore + punctuation
`-leading`	starts with a hyphen
`trailing-`	ends with a hyphen
`UPPERCASE`	uppercase letters
`has space`	contains a space
`under_score`	contains an underscore
`dot.in.slug`	contains a dot
`slash/in/slug`	contains a slash
(empty string)	must be at least 1 character
61+ chars	exceeds 60-char limit

Random IDs are slugs too

When you publish without choosing a slug, the server assigns a random 8-character base36 id (e.g. k3p9x2af). Those random ids satisfy the same regex, so the id column is polymorphic — every value, random or chosen, is a valid slug.

Error response

A POST with an invalid slug returns:

{
  "error": "invalid slug",
  "reason": "must be lowercase alphanumeric + hyphens, 1-60 chars, no leading/trailing dash"
}

with HTTP status 400. If the slug is valid but already taken, the status is 409 with {"error":"slug taken","slug":"<the-slug>"} instead — pick a different one and retry.