Ponytail review
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.From its SKILL.md
npx -y skills add nota-america/forgecat-agent-profiles --skill ponytail-reviewAssembled from the repository path, not quoted from the project. Check it against their README if it does not work.
SKILL.md
2.3 KB, 449 tokens by cl100k_base, 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.
What ships with it
Read from the repository
Just SKILL.md. No reference files, no scripts.
Gives 0 of the 12 instructions most review quality skills give in 449 tokens
Counted across 1,273 of the 2,403 authors here whose files we hold, read 2026-09-06
- Ask one question at a timein 63 of 1273, across 62 files
- Provide a recommended answer for each questionin 47 of 1273, across 45 files
- Rank findings by severityin 44 of 1273
- Use parameterized queries for database accessin 38 of 1273, across 20 files
- Validate all user input with schemasin 33 of 1273, across 15 files
- Store secrets in environment variablesin 32 of 1273, across 14 files
- Explore the codebase to answer questionsin 31 of 1273, across 29 files
- Store tokens in httpOnly cookiesin 30 of 1273, across 12 files
- Implement rate limiting on API endpointsin 30 of 1273, across 12 files
- Sanitize user-provided HTMLin 29 of 1273, across 11 files
- Return generic error messages to usersin 28 of 1273, across 10 files
- Cite file and line for every findingin 28 of 1273, across 25 files
Grouped from the skills themselves: near-identical wordings counted once, and counted by distinct author, so one author publishing three of these counts once. Length counted with cl100k_base; the agent that loads this file may tokenize it differently.