ponytail-help

ponytail-help is a skill for Claude Code from tarunag10/ai-switchboard. It costs 56 tokens per session (734 once invoked), scanned A, a copy of ponytail-help, MIT.

A quick reference for the available Ponytail commands, modes, and related skills. It describes lite, full, and ultra modes, plus tools for reviewing, auditing, tracking, and measuring simpler code.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when you need to check Ponytail commands or understand what each mode and related skill does.
Why use it?
It lets developers choose the right level of minimalism without changing the persistent Ponytail mode by accident.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: Claude Code plugin machinery. Also seen: mentions Claude Code; mentions Codex; mentions OpenCode.

Good fit Use it when you need to check Ponytail commands or understand what each mode and related skill does.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/tarunag10/ai-switchboard/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 tarunag10/ai-switchboard --skill ponytail-help
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/tarunag10/ai-switchboard

Made for: Claude Code.

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/tarunag10/ai-switchboard/ponytail-help/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/tarunag10/ai-switchboard/ponytail-help)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/tarunag10/ai-switchboard/ponytail-help"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tarunag10/ai-switchboard/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/tarunag10/ai-switchboard/ponytail-help"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tarunag10/ai-switchboard/ponytail-help.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 56 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 734 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 91% copy Near-identical to another mod 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 $0.00056 $0.00734
Opus 5 $0.00028 $0.00367
Sonnet 5 $0.00011 $0.00147
Haiku 4.5 $0.00006 $0.00073

Measured 9d ago against content hash 2264d1615117, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-09, 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 9d 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.

Origin

This is a copy

91% identical to ponytail-help — 7 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.

third_party/ponytail/skills/ponytail-help/SKILL.md · 72 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 72 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Ponytail Help

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

Levels

Level Trigger What change
Lite /ponytail lite Build what's asked, name the lazier alternative in one line.
Full /ponytail The ladder enforced: YAGNI → stdlib → native → one line → minimum. Default.
Ultra /ponytail ultra YAGNI extremist. Deletion before addition. Challenges requirements before building.

Level sticks until changed or session end.

Skills

Skill Trigger What it does
ponytail /ponytail Lazy mode itself. Simplest solution that works.
ponytail-review /ponytail-review Over-engineering review: L42: yagni: factory, one product. Inline.
ponytail-audit /ponytail-audit Whole-repo over-engineering audit: ranked list of what to delete.
ponytail-debt /ponytail-debt Harvest ponytail: shortcut comments into a tracked ledger.
ponytail-gain /ponytail-gain Measured-impact scoreboard: less code, less cost, more speed.
ponytail-help /ponytail-help This card.

Codex uses @ponytail, @ponytail-review, and @ponytail-help; Claude Code and OpenCode use the slash-command forms above (OpenCode ships all six as slash commands).

Deactivate

Say "stop ponytail" or "normal mode". Resume anytime with /ponytail. /ponytail off also works.

Configure Default Mode

Default mode = full, auto-active every session. Change it:

Environment variable (highest priority):

export PONYTAIL_DEFAULT_MODE=ultra

Config file (~/.config/ponytail/config.json, Windows: %APPDATA%\ponytail\config.json):

{ "defaultMode": "lite" }

Set "off" to disable auto-activation on session start, activate manually with /ponytail when wanted.

Resolution: env var > config file > full.

Update

Enable auto-update once: open /plugin, go to Marketplaces, pick ponytail, Enable auto-update. Claude Code then pulls new versions at startup (run /reload-plugins when it prompts). Manual refresh: /plugin marketplace update ponytail then /reload-plugins.

Read the full file on GitHub · 72 lines

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. 9d ago First seen · 72 lines · 56 tokens per session scan A 2264d1615117

Subscribe to this mod's changes

ponytail-help is a skill published in the GitHub repository tarunag10/ai-switchboard (2 stars, last pushed 15d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 56 tokens to every session and 734 once invoked, about $0.0003 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 91% identical to ponytail-help, differing in 7 lines, and is treated as a copy.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories