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ponytail-review

★ 75,041

by dietrichgebert · part of dietrichgebert/ponytail

Review a diff for over-engineering. Finds what to delete: reinvented stdlib, needless deps, speculative abstractions. One line per finding.

🔌 This skill ships inside the ponytail plugin — install the plugin and you also get hooks.

This is the playbook your agent receives when the skill activates — you don't need to read it to use the skill, but it's here to audit before installing.

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

Scope: over-engineering and complexity only. Correctness bugs, security holes, and performance are explicitly out of scope. Route them 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.