ponytail-help

ponytail-help is a skill for Claude Code from SummerSec/SumSec-Skills. It costs 49 tokens per session (402 once invoked), scanned A, original, Apache-2.0.

A quick reference for Ponytail, a set of coding-agent modes that favor the simplest correct solution.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to see Lite, Full, and Ultra modes, learn about review and audit commands, or find how to change the default mode.
Why use it?
It explains which modes and companion skills exist, so you do not need to remember their commands or configuration options.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin. Also seen: mentions Codex.

Part of the dev-tools plugin — 10 skills shipped together

Good fit Use it to see Lite, Full, and Ultra modes, learn about review and audit commands, or find how to change the default mode.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/summersec/sumsec-skills/ponytail-help
Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Any agent
npx skills add SummerSec/SumSec-Skills --skill ponytail-help
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/SummerSec/SumSec-Skills

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install dev-tools, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 10 skills.

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.

agentmods badge for ponytail-help

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/summersec/sumsec-skills/ponytail-help/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/summersec/sumsec-skills/ponytail-help)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/summersec/sumsec-skills/ponytail-help"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/summersec/sumsec-skills/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.

agentmods 80×15 button for ponytail-help

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/summersec/sumsec-skills/ponytail-help"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/summersec/sumsec-skills/ponytail-help.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 49 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 402 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.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00049 $0.00402
Opus 5 $0.00024 $0.00201
Sonnet 5 $0.00010 $0.00080
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00040

Measured 8d ago against content hash a8b61b628e87, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-08, 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.

dev-tools/skills/ponytail-help/SKILL.md · 54 lines

What it actually says

Ponytail Help

Display this reference card when invoked. One-shot, do NOT change mode or persist anything.

Levels

Level Trigger What changes
Lite /ponytail lite Build what's asked, but name the lazier alternative in one line.
Full /ponytail YAGNI -> reuse -> stdlib -> native -> one line -> minimum. Default.
Ultra /ponytail ultra YAGNI extremist. Deletion before addition. Challenges requirements before building.

Skills

Skill Trigger What it does
ponytail /ponytail Lazy mode itself. Simplest correct solution.
ponytail-review /ponytail-review Over-engineering review for a diff.
ponytail-audit /ponytail-audit Repo-wide over-engineering audit.
ponytail-help /ponytail-help This card.

Codex commonly invokes these as @ponytail, @ponytail-review, @ponytail-audit, and @ponytail-help.

Deactivate

Say "stop ponytail" or "normal mode".

Configure Default Mode

Environment variable:

export PONYTAIL_DEFAULT_MODE=ultra

Config file:

{ "defaultMode": "lite" }

Resolution order: env var -> config file -> full.

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.

  1. 8d ago First seen · 54 lines · 49 tokens per session scan A a8b61b628e87

Subscribe to this mod's changes

ponytail-help is a skill published in the GitHub repository SummerSec/SumSec-Skills (8 stars, last pushed 24d ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 49 tokens to every session and 402 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 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 2026-08-31.

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