Ponytail review

Skill Emlembow/skills/plugins/ponytail-review-gate/skills/ponytail-review

A collection of custom skills

Install

npx -y skills add Emlembow/skills --skill ponytail-review

Assembled 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

Code review focused exclusively on over-engineering. Finds what to delete: reinvented standard library, unneeded dependencies, speculative abstractions, dead flexibility. One line per finding: location, what to cut, what replaces it. Use when the user says "review for over-engineering", "what can we delete", "is this over-engineered", "simplify review", or invokes /ponytail-review. Complements correctness-focused review — this one only hunts complexity.

SKILL.md

2.3 KB, as published. Nobody here has run it

Review diffs for unnecessary complexity. One line per finding: location, what to cut, what replaces it. The diff's best outcome is getting shorter.

Format

L<line>: <tag> <what>. <replacement>. — or <file>:L<line>: ... for multi-file diffs.

Tags:

delete: — dead code, unused flexibility, speculative feature. Replacement: nothing.
stdlib: — hand-rolled thing the standard library ships. Name the function.
native: — dependency or code doing what the platform already does. Name the feature.
yagni: — abstraction with one implementation, config nobody sets, layer with one caller.
shrink: — same logic, fewer lines. Show the shorter form.

Examples

❌ "This EmailValidator class might be more complex than necessary, have you considered whether all these validation rules are needed at this stage?"

✅ L12-38: stdlib: 27-line validator class. "@" in email, 1 line — real validation is the confirmation mail.

✅ L4: native: moment.js imported for one format call. Intl.DateTimeFormat, 0 deps.

✅ repo.py:L88: yagni: AbstractRepository with one implementation. Inline it until a second one exists.

✅ L52-71: delete: retry wrapper around an idempotent local call. Nothing replaces it.

✅ L30-44: shrink: manual loop builds dict. dict(zip(keys, values)), 1 line.

Scoring

End with the only metric that matters: net: -<N> lines possible.

If there is nothing to cut, say Lean already. Ship. and stop.

Boundaries

Complexity only — correctness bugs, security holes, and performance go to a normal review pass, not this one. A single smoke test or assert-based self-check is the ponytail minimum, not bloat — never flag it for deletion. Does not apply the fixes, only lists them. "stop ponytail-review" or "normal mode": revert to verbose review style.