mcpbeat

Ponytail Audit

google/ponytail-audit

> Whole-repo audit for over-engineering. Like ponytail-review, but scans the or replace with stdlib/native equivalents. Use when the user says "audit this codebase", "audit for over-engineering", "what can I delete from this repo", "find bloat", "ponytail-audit", or "/ponytail-audit". One-shot report, does not apply fixes.

This is a copy. The original lives at dietrichgebert/ponytail-ponytail-audit.

413 tokens
context cost
the whole folder, loaded on every use
1
files
instructions only
0
copies elsewhere
how many repositories repackaged it
1
stars on the repo
on the repository, not the skill itself

Install

one command, takes just this skill from the repository
npx skills add https://github.com/google/tf-remote-vars --skill ponytail-audit

The instruction itself

4 sections, as written by the author

ponytail-review, repo-wide. Scan the whole tree instead of a diff. Rank

findings biggest cut first.

Tags

Same as ponytail-review:

  • 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.

Hunt

Deps the stdlib or platform already ships, single-implementation interfaces,

factories with one product, wrappers that only delegate, files exporting one

thing, dead flags and config, hand-rolled stdlib.

Output

One line per finding, ranked: <tag> <what to cut>. <replacement>. [path].

End with net: -<N> lines, -<M> deps possible. Nothing to cut: Lean already. Ship.

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. Lists findings, applies nothing. One-shot.

"stop ponytail-audit" or "normal mode" to revert.

How to use it

Copy the folder

Take google/ponytail-audit from the repository into ~/.claude/skills for personal use, or into .claude/skills inside a project.

Check the name does not clash

The agent identifies a skill by the name field in its header. Two skills with the same name cannot sit side by side — one of them will be ignored.