Most serverless tutorials stop at a hello-world Lambda behind API Gateway. I wanted the opposite: build one real product end to end, run every command on real AWS, and write

down the actual numbers — including the ones that didn't go as planned.

The result is a 21-article series that builds a URL shortener with realtime click analytics , fully serverless, and takes it to production: auth, multi-tenancy, an event

pipeline, realtime push, observability, CI/CD with canary deploys, a cost breakdown, and a load test. Code:

github.com/nghiadaulau/serverless-url-shortener-aws .

The product

┌──────── Cognito (JWT) ─────────┐

Browser ─HTTPS──▶ API Gateway (HTTP API) │ auth

│ │ │ │

POST /links ───┼─────▶ create ──▶ DynamoDB (single-table)

GET /{code} ───┼─────▶ resolve ─┬─▶ 301 redirect

│ │ └─▶ EventBridge ─▶ SQS(+DLQ) ─▶ aggregator

│ │ │ count + push

└─WebSocket───────────────────────────────────◀── realtime dashboard

Step Functions (link moderation) · X-Ray · CloudWatch alarms

SAM (IaC) · GitHub…