ponytail-gain
dietrichgebert/ponytail
Display ponytail's measured benchmark impact as a compact ASCII scoreboard.
What is ponytail-gain?
Shows ponytail's published benchmark medians across five everyday tasks and three models, displaying reductions in lines of code and cost plus speed improvements. Triggered by commands like '/ponytail-gain' or 'show ponytail impact'—a one-shot display that makes no persistent changes.
- Renders ASCII bar chart showing lines-of-code reduction (6–20% of original)
- Displays cost reduction metrics (23–53% of original)
- Shows speed improvement (3–6× faster)
- References /ponytail-debt for deferred shortcuts in current repo
- References /ponytail-audit for remaining cuttable code
- One-shot display with no mode changes or file persistence
How to install ponytail-gain
npx skills add https://github.com/dietrichgebert/ponytail --skill ponytail-gainHow to use ponytail-gain
- 1.Trigger the skill with '/ponytail-gain', 'ponytail gain', 'what does ponytail save', 'show ponytail impact', or 'ponytail scoreboard'
- 2.View the rendered ASCII scoreboard showing lines-of-code, cost, and speed metrics
- 3.Use /ponytail-debt or /ponytail-audit commands for repo-specific analysis if needed
Use cases
- Quick overview of ponytail's general effectiveness before adopting it
- Justifying ponytail adoption to team members with concrete benchmarks
- Understanding typical savings across email validators, debounce, CSV sum, countdown timers, and rate limiters
- Comparing impact across Haiku, Sonnet, and Opus models
- Developers evaluating code-generation tools
- Teams considering ponytail adoption
- Engineers wanting to understand benchmark-based savings claims
ponytail-gain FAQ
No. These are published benchmark medians from five everyday tasks across three models (Haiku, Sonnet, Opus). Per-repo figures come only from /ponytail-debt (a counted ledger) or /ponytail-audit.
Email validator, debounce, CSV sum, countdown timer, and rate limiter.
No. It is a one-shot display only. Use 'stop ponytail' or 'normal mode' to revert.
The benchmarks/ directory and the README, which contain measured medians across the five tasks and three models.
Full instructions (SKILL.md)
Source of truth, from dietrichgebert/ponytail.
name: ponytail-gain description: > Show ponytail's measured impact as a compact scoreboard: less code, less cost, more speed, from the benchmark medians. One-shot display, not a persistent mode, and not a per-repo number. Trigger: /ponytail-gain, "ponytail gain", "what does ponytail save", "show ponytail impact", "ponytail scoreboard".
Ponytail Gain
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.
Related skills
More from dietrichgebert/ponytail and the wider catalog.
ponytail
Forces the laziest solution that actually works—question whether tasks need to exist, reach for stdlib first, ship minimal code.
ponytail-review
Code review focused exclusively on over-engineering—finds what to delete.
ponytail-audit
Whole-repo audit for over-engineering: ranked list of what to delete, simplify, or replace.
ponytail-help
Quick-reference card for ponytail modes, skills, and commands.
ponytail-debt
Harvest ponytail: comments into a debt ledger to track deliberate shortcuts before they rot.