Ponytail Lite

One file. No hooks. He would have wanted it this way.

"Ponytail Lite" is Ponytail without the plugin madness.

Not to be confused with Ponytail's lite mode. This is a separate one-file version:

No plugin. No hooks. No MCP. No commands. No mode switching. Just copy AGENTS.md into the place your agent reads instructions. That's it.

The Joke

Ponytail is a beautiful contradiction: an anti-overengineering tool delivered as a whole plugin ecosystem, with lifecycle hooks, slash commands, MCP, statuslines, adapter tests, and enough install paths to make a senior engineer stare silently at the wall.

Ponytail Lite is what happens after that senior engineer comes back from coffee:

AGENTS.md

Why This Exists

Could you just copy AGENTS.md from Ponytail? Yes.

This repo exists so you do not have to walk past the plugin machinery to find the one file.

The AGENTS.md here is not a byte-for-byte copy. It is an opinionated cleanup of the original: same lazy senior dev idea, less plugin baggage, and guardrails rewritten for people who just want the file.

Install

Copy AGENTS.md, or copy the same text into whatever your agent calls "project instructions" or "rules".

Uninstall

Delete the file you copied.

If you pasted the text into a global instructions file, delete that paragraph.

No cleanup script. No leftover mode flag. No statusline entry. No hidden MCP server still thinking about your dependency graph.

What It Does

Before writing code, the agent climbs this ladder:

1. Does this need to exist?
2. Does it already exist in the codebase?
3. Does the standard library do it?
4. Does a native platform feature cover it?
5. Does an installed dependency solve it?
6. Can this be one line?
7. Only then, write the minimum code that works.

License

MIT