Ponytail Gain
SkillDev toolsSee how much the ponytail approach saves in code, cost, and speed, presented as a compact scoreboard built from benchmark medians. Once added, your AI can display this scoreboard whenever you ask. It is a one-shot display rather than a persistent mode, and the numbers are general medians, not per-repo results.
Available today. Use it from your connected AI after setup.
No other account needed.
After adding the skill, type /ponytail-gain or ask your AI for the ponytail scoreboard to see the benchmark numbers.
Then ask your AI: use the Ponytail Gain skill
What your AI can do with it
- Show a compact scoreboard of ponytail's measured impact
- Summarize benchmark medians for code, cost, and speed savings
- Respond to /ponytail-gain or requests like show ponytail impact
- Answer questions such as what does ponytail save
- Deliver the scoreboard on demand as a one-shot display
What this skill tells your AI
The instructions your AI receives, as published by dietrichgebert/ponytail in skills/ponytail-gain/SKILL.md and read by ahel’s review.
Display this scoreboard when invoked. One-shot: do NOT change mode, write flag files, or persist anything.
The figures are the published benchmark medians (5 everyday tasks: email
validator, debounce, CSV sum, countdown timer, rate limiter; three models:
Haiku, Sonnet, Opus). They are measured, not computed from the current repo.
Source: benchmarks/ and the README.
Scoreboard
Render plain ASCII bars. The bar length shows the measured range; the label carries the exact figure:
ponytail gain benchmark median · 5 tasks · 3 models
Lines of code no-skill ████████████████████ 100%
ponytail ██▌················· 6–20% ▼ 80–94%
Cost no-skill ████████████████████ 100%
ponytail █████▌·············· 23–53% ▼ 47–77%
Speed ponytail ▸ 3–6× faster
This repo: /ponytail-debt (shortcuts you deferred)
/ponytail-audit (what's still cuttable)
Honesty boundary
These are benchmark medians, not this repo. NEVER print a per-repo savings
number ("you saved X lines/tokens here"): the unbuilt version was never
written, so there is no real baseline to subtract from in a live repo. The
only real per-repo figures come from /ponytail-debt (a counted ledger), and
this card points there instead of inventing one.
Boundaries
One-shot display. Edits nothing, changes no mode. "stop ponytail" or "normal mode": revert.
Signals
- GitHub stars
- 135k
- Forks
- 7k
- Last commit
- Sep 2026
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ponytail-gain- Source
- github.com/dietrichgebert/ponytail