Ponytail is a plugin that makes coding agents write the least code that works. Before adding anything, it checks whether the change is needed, already exists, or can use the stdlib or a native API. Same behavior, fewer lines to own.
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Claude Code
Hi everyone!
Coding agents got very good at writing code. Maybe a little too good.
Ponytail gives them one thing they often miss: a stop rule.
Reuse what is already in the repo. Use the standard library or a native platform feature if it already does the job. If an existing dependency already does it, use that. New code comes last.
A lot of last year’s tooling wrapped the model in more process. This one does the opposite. Once the model can already ship the feature, the harder part is getting it to stop building.
Maybe the next superpower is restraint.
P.S. /ponytail ultra exists for when your codebase has wronged you personally 💢🫵🔥🥹
@zaczuo
Oof, shots fired! IYKYK
Love this. Do you see any difference in terms of time to complete a task with ponytail vs without? My assumption is that if it can find something pre-built, you're net faster with it because the time to find the re-usable code is less than the time to generate the code from scratch.
I have been using it for about a month. Lately, I hadn’t been coding anything myself and had been leaving everything to AI, but after trying this, I realized there was a lot of duplicate code. For example, instead of creating a function that can be used by simply adding parameters to an existing function, AI creates a separate function to use. I also really like the concept of making a colleague, who works less and strives for efficient coding, do the work.
@optimistic_guy No, the skills here are likely guides that your Coding Agent can pick up to be less verbose. I've seen Claude writing monologues as comments, and sometimes, it writes functions a bit too long (not sure how to explain this, but you get it if the code has extra functions, wrappers, and stuff added onto it, whereas it could be simpler and direct).
The skills here try to eliminate that.
Wow, going to try it right now. I've been wanting something like this. Is really annoying when we see a bunch of useless code on something simple. Will be back to review!
Nove one! how many tokens does it eat before producing an action?
I've been using Ponytail before Astra every day.