Ponytail

He says nothing. He writes one line. It works.

80-94% less code · 3-6× faster · 47-77% cheaper
_{Median of 10 runs across Haiku, Sonnet, and Opus. Reproduce it yourself.}

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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:

<!-- ponytail: browser has one -->
<input type="date">

More survivors in examples/.

Numbers

Five everyday tasks (email validator, debounce, CSV sum, countdown timer, rate limiter), three models, three arms: no skill, the caveman skill, and ponytail. Ten runs per cell, median reported.

80-94% less code, 47-77% less cost, and 3-6× faster than a no-skill agent, on every model. Every shortcut ponytail takes is marked in the code with a ponytail: comment naming its upgrade path. Reproduce it yourself: npx promptfoo eval -c benchmarks/promptfooconfig.yaml. Method and raw numbers: benchmarks/. Production-grade tasks, where an unconstrained agent bloats far more, are written up in benchmarks/results/.

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:

The Claude Code and Codex plugins run two tiny Node.js lifecycle hooks, so node needs to be on your PATH (note for Nix/nvm users: it must be on the non-interactive shell's PATH). If it isn't, the skills still work, the always-on activation just stays quiet instead of erroring on every prompt.

Claude Code

/plugin marketplace add DietrichGebert/ponytail
/plugin install ponytail@ponytail

Codex

codex plugin marketplace add DietrichGebert/ponytail
codex

Open /plugins, select the Ponytail marketplace, and install Ponytail. Then open /hooks, review and trust its two lifecycle hooks, and start a new thread.

GitHub Copilot CLI

copilot plugin marketplace add DietrichGebert/ponytail
copilot plugin install ponytail@ponytail

In an interactive Copilot CLI session, use the slash equivalents:

/plugin marketplace add DietrichGebert/ponytail
/plugin install ponytail@ponytail

Copilot CLI namespaces plugin commands by plugin name. For example:

/ponytail:ponytail ultra
/ponytail:ponytail-review

Pi agent harness

pi install git:github.com/DietrichGebert/ponytail

OpenCode

Run OpenCode from a checkout of this repo (the plugin reuses its hooks/ and skills/), and add to opencode.json:

{ "plugin": ["./.opencode/plugins/ponytail.mjs"] }

Injects the ruleset every turn at the active level; adds the /ponytail commands (see Commands). OpenCode also auto-loads this repo's AGENTS.md, so the rules hold even without the plugin. The plugin adds the lite/full/ultra/off levels.

Gemini CLI

gemini extensions install https://github.com/DietrichGebert/ponytail

Loads the ruleset as always-on context every session and registers the /ponytail commands; the skills/ ship too, activated when a task needs them.

That was it. He'd be proud. He won't say it.

Active every session, with a handful of commands (see Commands). /ponytail ultra exists for when the codebase has wronged you personally. Startup and mode-change text shows the current mode.

Cursor, Windsurf, Cline, GitHub Copilot (editor), Aider, Kiro: copy the matching rules file from this repo (.cursor/rules/, .windsurf/rules/, .clinerules/, .github/copilot-instructions.md, AGENTS.md, .kiro/steering/).

Kiro: copy .kiro/steering/ponytail.md to ~/.kiro/steering/ (global) or .kiro/steering/ in your project.

GitHub Copilot CLI fallback (instruction-only mode): it reads AGENTS.md and .github/copilot-instructions.md in a project, or copy the rules into ~/.copilot/copilot-instructions.md to run ponytail in every project. This path keeps always-on guidance, but does not add plugin mode switches or hooks.

Antigravity and VS Code with the Codex extension: both read AGENTS.md, which this repo ships, so it works from the repo root with no setup (~/.codex/AGENTS.md makes Codex global, .agents/rules/ makes it an always-on rule in Antigravity).

Which files map to which agent: Agent portability.

Commands

Command	What it does
/ponytail [lite | full | ultra | off]	Set the intensity, or turn it off. No argument reports the current level.
/ponytail-review	Review the current diff for over-engineering, hands back a delete-list.
/ponytail-audit	Audit the whole repo for over-engineering, not just the diff.
/ponytail-debt	Harvest the ponytail: shortcuts you've deferred into a ledger, so "later" doesn't become "never".
/ponytail-help	Quick reference for the commands above.

Commands need a skill-capable host (Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, Gemini, pi). In Codex they're skills, invoke with @ (@ponytail-review). The instruction-only adapters (Cursor, Windsurf, Cline, Copilot, Kiro, Antigravity) load the always-on ruleset without the commands.

Development

When changing the compact rule text, keep the agent copies aligned:

node scripts/check-rule-copies.js
npm test

The correctness benchmark spawns Python for email and CSV checks; python3 is tried before python. CSV checks need pandas installed locally.

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.

License

MIT. The shortest license that works.