What is ponytail-help?

A read-only reference card for Ponytail's operating levels, commands, environment settings, and governance links. It explains which Ponytail skill to use and how to trigger it.

Use it to check available skills, understand the lite, full, and ultra modes, and learn how Ponytail-related commands work.

It removes the need to remember Ponytail's commands or search through its documentation. It also makes clear that looking up this information does not change your code or settings.

How dradoaica/cogov-a-sdlc configures Claude Code and Codex

Reuse

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.

Copy the file

curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dradoaica/cogov-a-sdlc/main/.agents/skills/ponytail-help/SKILL.md

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/dradoaica/cogov-a-sdlc

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Wrote 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.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/dradoaica/cogov-a-sdlc/ponytail-help/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/dradoaica/cogov-a-sdlc/ponytail-help)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/dradoaica/cogov-a-sdlc/ponytail-help"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/dradoaica/cogov-a-sdlc/ponytail-help/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.

Your own site · 80×15

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/dradoaica/cogov-a-sdlc/ponytail-help"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/dradoaica/cogov-a-sdlc/ponytail-help.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>

Per session 42 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.

When invoked 439 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.

Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.

Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.

Token cost

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	$0.00042	$0.00439
Opus 5.5	$0.00017	$0.00176
Sonnet 5.5	$0.00008	$0.00088
Haiku 4.5	$0.00004	$0.00044

Measured 8d ago against content hash cf0a5879ece9, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

ponytail-help 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.

.agents/skills/ponytail-help/SKILL.md · 58 lines

What it actually says

Skill: Ponytail Help (Reference & Command Index)

Purpose

Provides a quick-reference index of available Ponytail operational modes, skill commands, environment configurations, and governance relationships.

Inputs required

User trigger (/ponytail-help or query about ponytail usage).

Preconditions / governance gates

Informational Only: Displays reference documentation; does not mutate environment or repository settings.

Procedure (mandatory)

Summarize operational levels:
- lite: Build requested scope, present a minimal option for human decision.
- full (Default): Minimal complete diff, standard libraries, necessary tests, clear handoff notes.
- ultra: Challenge requirement assumptions before writing code.
List available skills and triggers:
- ponytail: Core pragmatic development skill.
- ponytail-review: Focused code and diff review.
- ponytail-audit: Repository-wide maintainability and bloat audit.
- ponytail-debt: Deferral and shortcut debt scanner.
- ponytail-gain: Empirical benchmark scoreboard.
- ponytail-help: Command reference card.
Document governance interoperability:
- Explain how Ponytail functions within cogov-a-sdlc (YAGNI execution bounded by ADR and User Story gates).
Display configuration and activation options:
- Environment variables (PONYTAIL_DEFAULT_MODE).
- Config file locations and host-specific invocation syntax.

Outputs

Formatted reference card.

Validation

Verify all documented commands and paths correspond to active skills in .agents/skills/.

Escalation points

None (informational display).

Sources

Upstream: DietrichGebert/ponytail
Repository Governance: .agents/AGENTS.md

Changes

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 · 58 lines · 42 tokens per session scan A cf0a5879ece9

Subscribe to this mod's changes

ponytail-help is a skill published in the GitHub repository dradoaica/cogov-a-sdlc (3 stars, last pushed 5d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 42 tokens to every session and 439 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.

Productivity

orbit-notion

Open Orbit briefing skill — selected by the Orbit pipeline when Notion is the user's only connected connector, or when the user explicitly scopes their daily digest to Notion. Pulls the past 24 hours of document edits, comments, mentions, and database row changes from the user's authenticated Notion connection and…

nexu-io/open-design · 117 tokens

agentmail

Use your assigned AgentMail inbox to read email tasks, explicitly send or reply, and check delivery. Provided automatically by your inbox assignment.

paperclipai/paperclip · 30 tokens

rowboat-spaces

How to work as a member of Rowboat Spaces, the team chat where people and agents work together. Load it once per session, before acting on any request that reaches you from Rowboat; it covers your setup, mentions and hand-offs, the tools, and files.

rowboatlabs/rowboat · 60 tokens

feishu

Work with Feishu or Lark bots, docs, sheets, bitables, approval flows, and OpenAPI/MCP setup without hardcoding credentials.

Hmbown/CodeWhale · 33 tokens

pinchtab-mcp

Use this skill when a task requires browser automation through PinchTab's MCP server connected to a remote browser instance. Covers navigation, element interaction, data extraction, form filling, multi-step flows, and session management via MCP tools.

pinchtab/pinchtab · 52 tokens

mochi-remind

Handle due reminders — notify the user with natural language and mark them done.

kirodotdev/KiroCrew · 20 tokens

cogov-a-sdlc: Skill for Claude Code