I published my first npm package: `short-id-lite` 🎉

A tiny, secure short ID generator for Node.js — feedback welcome

Publishing your first npm package is oddly intimidating.

You keep asking yourself:

• “Is this useful enough?”
• “Am I reinventing the wheel?”
• “Will anyone actually use this?”

Last week, I decided to stop overthinking and ship something small, focused, and honest.

That package is short-id-lite.

👉 GitHub repo: https://github.com/BasharVI/short-id-lite

👉 npm package: https://www.npmjs.com/package/short-id-lite

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The problem I kept running into

In almost every backend project, you eventually need short IDs:

• invite codes
• public-facing references
• temporary tokens
• human-friendly identifiers

Not UUIDs. Not database IDs.

Just short, random, URL-safe strings.

So naturally, you reach for existing solutions.

And here’s the friction I kept feeling

• UUIDs
  
  Too long, not human-friendly, overkill for many use cases.

• Math.random-based helpers
  
  Easy to write, but not safe. Collision risk, predictability issues.

• Fully featured libraries (like nanoid)
  
  Excellent libraries — but sometimes:

  • more options than I need
  • more surface area than I want
  • more code to audit for very small use cases

In many projects, I just wanted:

“Give me a short, safe ID. No config. No decisions.”

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Why I created short-id-lite

I wanted a package that was:

• Extremely small
• Dependency-free
• Crypto-safe
• Boring in the best way
• Easy to audit
• Stable for years

So I built exactly that — and nothing more.

This is not meant to replace nanoid.

It’s meant to cover the 80% case with 10% complexity.

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What short-id-lite does

• Generates short, URL-safe IDs
• Uses Node.js crypto (crypto.randomBytes)
• Has one function
• No configuration objects
• No mutable global state
• No browser support
• No magic

Example

ts
import { shortId } from "short-id-lite";

shortId();      // e.g. "aZ3F9q"
shortId(10);    // e.g. "Qm9KfP2aXz"