Ponytail adversarial review
Skill Emlembow/skills/plugins/ponytail-review-gate/skills/ponytail-adversarial-review
A collection of custom skills
npx -y skills add Emlembow/skills --skill ponytail-adversarial-reviewAssembled from the repository path, not quoted from the project. Check it against their README if it does not work.
One thing to look at
- 2 stars2 stars. Stars are a popularity signal and not a quality one, but at this level it is likely that nobody has read this closely except its author, and you would be relying on your own review.
What its author says it does
Copied from the file, not written here
Use in a repo whenever Codex writes, edits, refactors, scaffolds, or reviews code. Requires an adversarial Ponytail review of the changed code before completion, a main-agent response to each corrective action, code updates for accepted findings, and verification before the final answer.
SKILL.md
3.7 KB, as published. Nobody here has run it
Ponytail Adversarial Review
Use this skill as a completion gate for code changes in a target repo. The main agent may write code normally, but it cannot finish until Ponytail has challenged the diff and the main agent has either fixed or explicitly declined each finding.
Source Skill
Use the vendored Ponytail skills in this plugin:
- Ponytail mode:
../ponytail/SKILL.md - Ponytail review:
../ponytail-review/SKILL.md - Ponytail audit, optional whole-repo audit only, not the normal completion gate:
../ponytail-audit/SKILL.md
If those paths are missing, fall back to the installed @ponytail and @ponytail-review skills if available. If neither is available, perform the same review manually using Ponytail's ladder: YAGNI, stdlib, native platform features, installed dependency, one line, then minimum code.
Workflow
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Before editing, keep Ponytail's ladder in mind: delete, stdlib, native, installed dependency, one line, minimum custom code. Do not simplify away security, trust-boundary validation, data-loss prevention, accessibility, explicitly requested behavior, explicitly requested explanations/reports, hardware calibration knobs, or the smallest runnable check for non-trivial logic.
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After writing code, collect the changed surface:
- Run
git status --short. - Run
git diff -- <changed tracked files>. - For new untracked code files, read enough of the file to review the introduced code.
- Run
-
Run the adversarial review:
- Apply
ponytail-reviewto the changed code. - Hunt only unnecessary complexity: dead code, speculative abstractions, new dependencies, hand-rolled stdlib/native behavior, over-wide config, repeated boilerplate, or code that can become smaller without losing behavior.
- Do not flag the smallest useful runnable check or a real-world calibration knob as bloat.
- Do not run
ponytail-auditfor ordinary per-diff completion; reserve it for explicit whole-repo audit requests. - Use Ponytail's terse finding format internally:
file:L<line>: <tag>: <what>. <replacement>.
- Apply
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Main-agent corrective discussion:
- For each Ponytail finding, decide one of:
accept,reject, ordefer. - Accept when the replacement preserves the user's requested behavior and improves simplicity.
- Reject only when the finding would remove explicit requirements, correctness, security, accessibility, error handling that prevents data loss, or necessary framework convention.
- Defer only when the change is real but outside the user's requested scope; name the follow-up plainly.
- For each Ponytail finding, decide one of:
-
Update code before completion:
- Apply every accepted corrective action.
- If corrective changes modify code, repeat the review on the new diff until there are no accepted findings left.
- Do not final while an accepted finding remains unpatched.
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Verify:
- Run the smallest relevant checks for the touched area, such as
npm run lint, unit tests, typecheck, or an Expo health check. - For non-trivial logic, leave or run one check that would fail if the logic broke.
- If a check cannot run, say why and keep the Ponytail review result visible in the final summary.
- Run the smallest relevant checks for the touched area, such as
Final Response
Keep the final concise. Include:
- What changed.
- Verification result.
- A short Ponytail note:
Lean already. Ship.or the accepted/rejected corrective actions.
Do not paste a long review transcript unless the user asks for it.