Inviting Bad Practice Solutions

Once again I'm considering using the wrong tool for a task. I guess I like to stretch the limits of stuff.

I'd like to make a CGI script-based twtxt interface. The use case I'm imagining (which may or may not be a complete strawman, but it's interesting) goes something like this:

The user has no admin rights on the server.

The user has a web or gemini directory to publish content.

CGI scripts can be executed.

We don't know which gemini or web server is used, meaning things like htaccess files may not work for example.

This means that the tool I'd like to make must:

More or less just be git cloned into a publicly readable directory.

Not rely on any cronjob or background process for fetching twtxt files.

Not ever take so long to execute that the server kills it.

Now, something like this should of course be a web service and run on a server where the admin sets it up. But there are already solutions out there for that. This is a more interesting problem to solve.

Any tips?

-- CC0 ew0k, 2021-09-30