Ponytail Makes 'Write Less Code' the Agent's Objective Function, With an Audit Command for Existing Bloat
Ponytail (~99.9k stars) is a skill pack whose entire purpose is stopping an agent from over-engineering, enforcing a seven-rung decision ladder: does this need to exist → already in the codebase → stdlib → native platform feature → installed dependency → one line → minimal working solution. It registers six commands including `/ponytail-review` to audit the current diff, `/ponytail-audit` to scan the whole repo, and `/ponytail-debt` to harvest deferred shortcuts into a ledger, with intensity levels lite/full/ultra/off. Claimed impact is ~54% average code reduction (up to 94%), ~20% cost reduction, and ~27% speed improvement — vendor-reported, so treat the numbers as directional, but the debt-ledger idea is independently useful.
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