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Show ponytail measured impact as a scoreboard: less code, less cost, more speed, from the benchmark medians. One-shot display.
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Lazy senior dev mode. Forces the simplest, shortest solution that works: YAGNI, stdlib first, no unrequested abstractions.
Forces the laziest solution that actually works, simplest, shortest, most minimal. Channels a senior dev who has seen everything: question whether the task needs to exist at all (YAGNI), reach for the standard library before custom code, native platform features before dependencies, one line before fifty. Supports intensity levels: lite, full (default), ultra. Use whenever the user says "ponytail", "be lazy", "lazy mode", "simplest solution", "minimal solution", "yagni", "do less", or "shortest path", and whenever they complain about over-engineering, bloat, boilerplate, or unnecessary dependencies.
Harvest every ponytail: shortcut comment into one debt ledger, so deferrals get tracked instead of forgotten. One-shot report.
Harvest every `ponytail:` comment in the codebase into a debt ledger, so the deliberate shortcuts and deferrals ponytail leaves behind get tracked instead of rotting into "later means never". Use when the user says "ponytail debt", "/ponytail-debt", "what did ponytail defer", "list the shortcuts", "ponytail ledger", or "what did we mark to do later". One-shot report, changes nothing.
Audit the whole repo for over-engineering. A ranked list of what to delete, simplify, or replace with stdlib or native features.
Review a diff for over-engineering. Finds what to delete: reinvented stdlib, needless deps, speculative abstractions. One line per finding.
| name | ponytail-gain |
| description | Show ponytail measured impact as a scoreboard: less code, less cost, more speed, from the benchmark medians. One-shot display. |
| homepage | https://github.com/DietrichGebert/ponytail |
| license | MIT |
Display this scoreboard when invoked. One-shot: do NOT change mode, write flag files, or persist anything.
The figures are the published benchmark medians (5 everyday tasks: email
validator, debounce, CSV sum, countdown timer, rate limiter; three models:
Haiku, Sonnet, Opus). They are measured, not computed from the current repo.
Source: benchmarks/ and the README.
Render plain ASCII bars. The bar length shows the measured range; the label carries the exact figure:
ponytail gain benchmark median · 5 tasks · 3 models
Lines of code no-skill ████████████████████ 100%
ponytail ██▌················· 6–20% ▼ 80–94%
Cost no-skill ████████████████████ 100%
ponytail █████▌·············· 23–53% ▼ 47–77%
Speed ponytail ▸ 3–6× faster
This repo: /ponytail-debt (shortcuts you deferred)
/ponytail-audit (what's still cuttable)
These are benchmark medians, not this repo. NEVER print a per-repo savings
number ("you saved X lines/tokens here"): the unbuilt version was never
written, so there is no real baseline to subtract from in a live repo. The
only real per-repo figures come from /ponytail-debt (a counted ledger), and
this card points there instead of inventing one.
One-shot display. Edits nothing, changes no mode. "stop ponytail" or "normal mode": revert.