Borrowing it
Nothing to install: this file belongs to dradoaica/cogov-a-sdlc. Take a copy, put it at the same path in your own repository, and replace the rules that are about this project with yours.
curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dradoaica/cogov-a-sdlc/main/.agents/skills/ponytail-debt/SKILL.mdgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/dradoaica/cogov-a-sdlcWrote this? Show the measurements
A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.
[](https://agentmods.dev/skills/dradoaica/cogov-a-sdlc/ponytail-debt)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/dradoaica/cogov-a-sdlc/ponytail-debt"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/dradoaica/cogov-a-sdlc/ponytail-debt/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/dradoaica/cogov-a-sdlc/ponytail-debt"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/dradoaica/cogov-a-sdlc/ponytail-debt.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>What it costs to keep this loaded
Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.
| Model | Per session | Once invoked |
|---|---|---|
| Fable 5.1 | $0.00061 | $0.00789 |
| Opus 5.5 | $0.00024 | $0.00316 |
| Sonnet 5.5 | $0.00012 | $0.00158 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00006 | $0.00079 |
Grade A, and why
ponytail-debt scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 8d ago.
A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.
Nothing flagged
None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 74 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Skill: Ponytail Debt (Shortcut & Technical Debt Ledger)
Purpose
Scans the codebase for deliberate shortcut annotations
(# shortcut: <ceiling>, <upgrade trigger> (risk: <low|med|high>, track: <US-…|PRB-…>) or legacy # ponytail: ...)
and compiles them into a structured, auditable technical debt ledger.
Inputs required
- Target repository or path.
- Optional custom marker pattern (defaults to
shortcut:andponytail:).
Preconditions / governance gates
- Read-Only Ledger: Produces an auditable report; does not modify code unless explicitly asked to save the ledger file.
- ITIL / Problem Record Alignment: Identifies unmanaged technical debt that may require elevation to ITIL Problem
Records (
docs/problem-records/) or ADRs (docs/adrs/).
Procedure (mandatory)
- Execute pattern scan across codebase:
- Scan files ignoring build artifacts, caches, and
.gitignorepaths:git grep --no-index --exclude-standard -nE '(#|//|/[*]) ?(shortcut|ponytail):' - If the user requests a custom marker, scan for that marker.
- Scan files ignoring build artifacts, caches, and
- Filter and parse hits:
- Discard non-deferral occurrences (e.g., references to keyboard shortcuts).
- Parse each valid comment into: File & Line, Simplified behavior, Ceiling limit, Upgrade trigger, Risk, Tracking item.
- Analyze risk and rot:
- Identify comments missing an explicit upgrade trigger or ceiling, tagging them with
[no-trigger](high risk of silent rot). - Identify comments missing a
track:reference (or referencing a non-existent story/problem record), tagging them with[untracked](violates.agents/protocols/maintainability.md→ Technical debt governance).
- Identify comments missing an explicit upgrade trigger or ceiling, tagging them with
- Format structured ledger:
- Output rows grouped by file:
<file>:<line>, <what was simplified>. ceiling: <limit>. upgrade: <trigger>. risk: <level>. track: <id>. - Conclude with summary statistics:
<N> markers, <M> with no trigger, <K> untracked.(orNo shortcut debt. Clean ledger.).
- Output rows grouped by file:
- Optional ledger persistence:
- If explicitly requested by the user, draft a problem record from
docs/problem-records/problem-record-template.mdatdocs/problem-records/PRB-YYYY-MM-DD-tech-debt-ledger.md(statusOpen), with the ledger as evidence. It stays a draft until a human reviews it (Rule 00).
- If explicitly requested by the user, draft a problem record from
What this file has done since we first saw it
Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.
- 8d ago First seen · 74 lines · 61 tokens per session scan A a121e3250ef9
ponytail-debt is a skill published in the GitHub repository dradoaica/cogov-a-sdlc (3 stars, last pushed 5d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 61 tokens to every session and 789 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5.5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-10-18.
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