Ponytail: the lazy senior developer living inside your agent
Ask an agent for a date picker and it may pull in a library or hand-build a calendar of hundreds of lines. Ponytail puts a ladder of questions in front of any new code: does it need to exist, is it already in the codebase, the standard library or the platform, can it be one line. It is lazy about the solution only, so trust-boundary validation, security and accessibility stay.
A ladder before writing: skip it, reuse the codebase, use the standard library, a platform feature, an installed dependency, one line, then the minimum.
Logic with a branch, loop, parser, money or security leaves one small test or an assert-based self-check behind.
/ponytail-review reads the code a change touches beyond the diff and checks bugs, security, load, untested risk and what to cut.
/ponytail-audit ranks problems across the whole repo, and /ponytail-debt gathers shortcut: comments into a ledger.
In Claude Code a band above the prompt shows task cost, tokens, agent time, code reuse and whether tests passed.
When to use it
The agent keeps inflating small tasks with new abstractions, wrappers and dependencies.
You need a review that also catches the untouched file your change just broke.
You want to see what each Claude Code task costs in money and agent time while it runs.
Ask your agent
Add a date field to the booking form using whatever the repo already has
/ponytail-review check my uncommitted changes
/ponytail ultra, first challenge which parts of this feature we actually need
Questions
How do I install Ponytail in Claude Code?
Send two separate prompts: /plugin marketplace add DietrichGebert/ponytail, then /plugin install ponytail@ponytail. Other agents can use the compact AGENTS.md instead.
Does Ponytail work in Codex?
Yes. Add the marketplace and plugin with the codex plugin commands, then trust its two lifecycle hooks in /hooks and start a new thread.
Will Ponytail cut validation to keep code short?
No. The rules forbid cutting trust-boundary validation, error handling that prevents data loss, security or accessibility.
