# Ponytail

> MIT “laziest senior” skill — measured LOC/token/cost cuts, not vibes

**Category:** AI Agents  
**Pricing:** open-source  
**URL:** https://github.com/DietrichGebert/ponytail  
**GitHub:** https://github.com/DietrichGebert/ponytail  
**Added:** 2026-09-29

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## The Hook

Ponytail puts the silent senior who deletes fifty lines into your coding agent — with published LOC/token/cost benches, not a “be terse” meme.

## What's Good

MIT (DietrichGebert/ponytail). Skill/plugin that pushes agents toward the smallest safe change (native `<input type="date">` over a date-picker library). Published agentic benches on a real FastAPI+React repo claim ~54% mean LOC cut, ~20% cheaper, ~27% faster, 100% safety vs no-skill baseline; npm `@dietrichgebert/ponytail` plus OpenClaw/Claude/Cursor install paths. Reproduce scripts live in-repo.

## The Catch

Same inflated-★ caution as other viral skill packs — rank the benches and diffs, not the counter. Vs Caveman (terse-prose / token-compression skill+proxy, BSL engine bits) and anti-slop (UI/copy slop filter + delivery gate): Ponytail is YAGNI/minimal-implementation discipline with published LOC/cost benches, not output-style compression and not a design-slop filter. Waitlist banner (“Something’s coming”) is a future tease at ponytail.dev/soon — not a paid wall on the MIT skill.

## Verdict

MIT laziest-senior skill when agents over-build; trust the published benches over the ★ count — waitlist is tease, not tollbooth.