ponytail-review

ponytail-review — over-engineering review of the current diff

Review the current changes for unnecessary complexity only. One line per finding: location, what to cut, what replaces it. The diff's best outcome is getting shorter.

When to fire

• "review for over-engineering", "what can we delete", "is this over-engineered", "simplify review", or /ponytail-review.
• After a ponytail (or any) coding session, as a complexity pass before commit.

Output contract

L<line>: <tag> <what>. <replacement>., or <file>:L<line>: ... for multi-file diffs.

Tags:

• delete: dead code, unused flexibility, speculative feature. Replacement: nothing.
• stdlib: hand-rolled thing the standard library ships. Name the function.
• native: dependency or code doing what the platform already does. Name the feature.
• yagni: abstraction with one implementation, config nobody sets, layer with one caller.
• shrink: same logic, fewer lines. Show the shorter form.

Examples

❌ "This EmailValidator class might be more complex than necessary, have you considered whether all these validation rules are needed at this stage?"

✅ L12-38: stdlib: 27-line validator class. "@" in email, 1 line — real validation is the confirmation mail.

✅ L4: native: moment.js imported for one format call. Intl.DateTimeFormat, 0 deps.

✅ repo.py:L88: yagni: AbstractRepository with one implementation. Inline it until a second one exists.

✅ L52-71: delete: retry wrapper around an idempotent local call. Nothing replaces it.

✅ L30-44: shrink: manual loop builds dict. dict(zip(keys, values)), 1 line.

Scoring

End with the only metric that matters: net: -<N> lines possible.

If there is nothing to cut, say Lean already. Ship. and stop.

Boundaries

Complexity only. Correctness bugs, security holes, and performance go to a normal review pass (/code-review), not this one. A single smoke test or assert-based self-check is the ponytail minimum, not bloat — never flag it for deletion. Lists findings; applies nothing. "stop ponytail-review" / "normal mode" reverts to verbose review style.

See also

• skills/ponytail/SKILL.md — the lazy-mode ruleset this enforces in review form.
• skills/ponytail-audit/SKILL.md — the same lens, repo-wide instead of diff-scoped.
• skills/caveman-review/SKILL.md — the terse-prose PR-review twin.