He says nothing. He writes one line. It works.
--- You know him. Long ponytail. Oval glasses. Has been at the company longer than the version control. You show him fifty lines; he looks at them, says nothing, and replaces them with one. Ponytail puts him inside your AI agent. ## Before / after You ask for a date picker. Your agent installs flatpickr, writes a wrapper component, adds a stylesheet, and starts a discussion about timezones. With ponytail: ```html ``` More survivors in [examples/](examples/). ## How it works Before writing code, the agent stops at the first rung that holds: ``` 1. Does this need to exist? → no: skip it (YAGNI) 2. Stdlib does it? → use it 3. Native platform feature? → use it 4. Installed dependency? → use it 5. One line? → one line 6. Only then: the minimum that works ``` Lazy, not negligent: trust-boundary validation, data-loss handling, security, and accessibility are never on the chopping block. ## Install The most effort ponytail will ever ask of you: ``` /plugin marketplace add DietrichGebert/ponytail /plugin install ponytail@ponytail ``` That was it. He'd be proud. He won't say it. Active every session. `/ponytail-review` finds what to delete in your diff. `/ponytail ultra` exists for when the codebase has wronged you personally. `/ponytail-help` explains the rest. Cursor, Windsurf, Cline, Copilot, Aider: copy the matching rules file from this repo ([`.cursor/rules/`](.cursor/rules/), [`.windsurf/rules/`](.windsurf/rules/), [`.clinerules/`](.clinerules/), [`.github/copilot-instructions.md`](.github/copilot-instructions.md), [`AGENTS.md`](AGENTS.md)). ## FAQ **Does it need a config file?** No. **What if I really need the 120-line cache class?** You don't. Insist anyway and he'll build it. Slowly. Correctly. While looking at you. **Does it scale?** The code you never wrote scales infinitely. Zero bugs, zero CVEs, 100% uptime since forever. **Why "ponytail"?** You know exactly why. ## Numbers Six tasks: streaming log parser, atomic file sync, notification dispatcher, validation engine, auth module, concurrent money ledger. One spec each, one fresh agent per arm, same model. Three arms: no skill, the [caveman](https://github.com/JuliusBrussee/caveman) skill, and ponytail. Every arm passes the same adversarial security and concurrency probes. Then the agreement ends:
