mcpbeat

Ponytail Gain

google/ponytail-gain

> cost, more speed, from the benchmark medians. One-shot display, not a "ponytail gain", "what does ponytail save", "show ponytail impact", "ponytail scoreboard".

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

493 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-gain

The instruction itself

4 sections, as written by the author

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.

How to use it

Copy the folder

Take google/ponytail-gain 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.