# Link Ration

> A monthly link-budget planner for social pages, drawn as a ration book. When a page may only carry a few outbound links a month, paste the month's planned posts and the allowance; the app decides which posts spend a link coupon and rewrites every other link post so it works without its link.

Live: https://link-ration.skillsafe.ai/
API: https://link-ration.skillsafe.ai/api.html

## Why it exists

On 21 October 2026 a Hacker News thread reporting that a large social network now asks business pages to pay to post more than two links a month drew more than 400 points and 385 comments. Whatever the platform, the question for a small page is the same: which posts deserve the few links, and how do the others still do their job?

## What runs free in the browser

- The post reader: one post per line, an optional date in front ("Nov 2:", "2 Nov", "11/02"), every link pulled out, words counted.
- The link ledger: posts that want a coupon, posts that point to the same destination (ignoring a trailing slash and tracking tags), posts with more than one link, link shorteners, tracking tags.
- The ration book: one perforated coupon per allowed link, ghost coupons for the posts over the ration, a counterfoil per post.
- The page's own guess at which posts deserve the coupons (posts where clicking is the action - order, book, register, donate, apply - first; content that can be told in the post last).
- Exports: posting list, Markdown, calendar CSV, a scheduler CSV (date, text, link - one row per post to publish), JSON, print.
- Re-planning mid-month: edit, add or move posts and every unchanged post keeps its decision; the page names the posts that changed and need another run.

## The metered lane: ration

Input fields (all strings): task ("ration"), page, goal, month, allowance ("1"-"10"), posts (JSON array of {id, date, text, links, words}), optional clip_note, retry_note.

Verdicts, checked in order:
1. needs-posts - fewer than two posts have four or more words; the reply asks two or three questions instead.
2. fits - link posts <= allowance; every link post spends a coupon.
3. over - more link posts than coupons; exactly allowance posts spend, every other link post gets a link-free rewrite.

Per-post actions: spend, native (rewrite without the link, and where the link lives instead: the post that kept it, the about section, a message to the page, or nowhere), as-is (no link), cut (under four words).

The page re-checks every reply: one decision per post, coupons within the allowance, no web address or comment-link workaround in a rewrite, pointers that land on a spent post, numbers and days the posts never mention.

## Sources

Built on the SkillSafe skill @coreyhaines31/social-content (https://skillsafe.ai/skill/@coreyhaines31/social-content): creating and repurposing social posts that lead with value and stand on their own. Runs on gpt-terra.