settings.json written by Notepad or VS Code on Windows can carry a
UTF-8 BOM. JSON.parse then throws SyntaxError, the outer catch swallows
it, hasStatusline stays false, and the statusline setup nudge is never
emitted.
Strip the leading BOM before parsing, matching the existing handling in
ponytail-mode-tracker.js. (#96 added a null guard but not BOM stripping.)
ponytail-activate.js and ponytail-runtime.js hardcoded ~/.claude for the
flag file and settings lookup, ignoring CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR. Add a shared
getClaudeDir() to ponytail-config.js and use it in both. Regression test
added to hooks.test.js.
Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Hardening per the A-F benchmark brief: non-trivial logic leaves one
runnable check; ponytail: comments on ceiling-bearing shortcuts name
the ceiling and upgrade path; prefer the edge-case-correct stdlib
option at equal size. Applied to SKILL.md, all cross-agent rule
copies, the hook fallback, and a guard line in ponytail-review.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
v1 lost to caveman on tokens/time despite minimal code: it wrote
essays defending each simplification. v2 caps explanation at three
lines and ships the lazy version instead of stalling on necessity
questions. Benchmark: 136.6k tok vs caveman 138.4k, code 47 vs 117
lines across 5 tasks.
Lakshya77089