Ponytail is a rule set and skill collection that pushes an AI coding agent to write as little code as a task needs. It ships as a plugin for Claude Code, Codex, GitHub Copilot CLI, Gemini CLI and several other agent hosts, and as plain rules files for editors such as Cursor, Windsurf and Cline. Before writing anything, the agent works down a fixed ladder: drop the feature if it does not need to exist, reuse what the codebase already has, then try the standard library, a native platform feature, an installed dependency and a one-line answer. New code comes only after all of those fail. The README is firm that validation, error handling, security and accessibility are off limits for cutting. Its example: asked for a date picker, the agent reaches for a native <input type="date"> instead of adding a library and a wrapper component. The plugin adds commands to set the intensity (lite, full, ultra or off), to review a diff or a whole repository for over-engineering, and to collect deferred shortcuts into a ledger. The maintainer publishes a benchmark: across twelve feature tasks on a FastAPI and React template with Haiku 4.5, the README reports about 54% fewer lines of code than the same agent without the skill, plus smaller drops in tokens, cost and time.
- Stars
- 162K
- Language
- JavaScript
- License
- MIT
- Momentum
- +5.7% 7dEstablished
