This is a shell script I wrote to test how fast StretchLink 1.0 (http://brettterpstra.com/2015/04/28/stretchlink-1-dot-0/) works, as referenced at http://www.macstories.net/linked/stretchlink-unshortens-and-cleans-urls-from-your-menu-bar/

test-stretchlink.sh

#!/bin/zsh -f

	# this is necessary for ZSH to be able to use $EPOCHSECONDS
zmodload zsh/datetime
	
	# this gives a date/time stamp without requiring an external call to the `date` 
	# program
function timestamp { strftime "%Y-%m-%d--%H.%M.%S" "$EPOCHSECONDS" }

	# This was the tricky part:
	# I dragged this URL from Tweetbot to the shell script, 
	# which added it to the document _without_ putting it on the pasteboard
	# Otherwise, of course, the test wouldn't be valid because
	# StretchLink would start working on it immediately.
	# 
	# The `echo` line will send it to the pasteboard, which is what should
	# trigger StretchLink
	
echo "http://bit.ly/1JqLxBW" | pbcopy

	# immediately after that (as fast as computationally possible)
	# the script will go into a loop, 
	# showing me the contents of the pasteboard
	# followed by a timestamp down to the second 
	# (I broke the loop manually using control+c)
while
do
	echo "\n`pbpaste`"
	timestamp
done

exit 0
# EOF

Result:

These lines repeated 18 times:

http://bit.ly/1JqLxBW
2015-04-28--19.09.33

and then this appeared:

http://www.presbyterianmission.org/ministries/yav/apply/
2015-04-28--19.09.33

That means that the URL was expanded in less than 1 second. Tenths of a second.

There's no meaningful way that this could be faster.

Note that StretchLink caches URLs that it has expanded until quit, so if you run this test more than once you will need to either quit the app or change the URL. Be sure it doesn't get expanded when you're adding it to the script!