Ponytail Audit

A repo-wide over-engineering audit. Where ponytail-review works on a diff, this scans the entire codebase and returns a ranked list of what to delete, simplify, or swap for a standard-library or native equivalent. It is a one-shot report — it surfaces the bloat but applies no fixes itself.

skills.sh installs: 55.5K
GitHub stars: 187.8K
last updated: Aug 21, 2026

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Install

$ npx -y skills add DietrichGebert/ponytail --skill ponytail-audit --agent claude-code

Installs into .claude/skills of the current project.

Files

Audit the whole repo like the senior developer who just inherited it and will be paged when it breaks. Order of importance: correct, safe, holds under load, tested, fast, lean. Lean still matters: every extra line must be read, tested and fixed later. This is a report the user asked for, so give it in full.

1. Map first

Audit what the user names: a folder, a package, or the whole repo. Nothing named: the whole repo.
Read the README, the deploy and build config, the dependency list, the entry points (main, routes, handlers, jobs, CLI commands) and the tests.
Find the expected load: one person running a script, or many users and processes at once. Judge scale against that, and say which load you assumed.
Trace the main flows end to end: where data comes in, what is stored, what goes out. Read those paths fully: input from users, money, auth, data writes, background jobs, anything shared between processes.
Big repo: go deep where a mistake costs the most, not file by file. Say which parts you did not read.