Ponytail Review

Quality review of a change: is the logic right, is it safe, does it hold under real load, is risky code tested, is it fast enough, and is every line needed. Reads the connected code, not only the diff. Each finding is explained in plain English. Use for "review this", "code review", "review the last commit", "review my PR", "is this over-engineered", /ponytail-review.

181,225 stars 9,958 forksSoftware Development Plugin marketplace

Install

Claude Code plugin
/plugin marketplace add DietrichGebert/ponytail

The repo is a Claude Code plugin marketplace. Run /plugin afterwards to pick the plugin that includes this skill.

skills CLI (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex and more)
npx skills add DietrichGebert/ponytail --skill ponytail-review
Manual install
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/DietrichGebert/ponytail.git /tmp/ponytail
mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills
cp -r /tmp/ponytail/skills/ponytail-review ~/.claude/skills/ponytail-review

Personal skills live in ~/.claude/skills. Use .claude/skills in a project folder to share a skill with your team.

From the SKILL.md

Review a change like the senior developer who 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. Understand first

- Review what the user names: uncommitted or staged changes, a branch, a PR
  link, or files. Nothing named: the uncommitted changes, or the last commit
  if there are none.
- Read the diff, then the code it touches: callers of every changed function,
  the functions it calls, the tests, the README.
- Trace the real flow: where data comes in, what is stored, what goes out.
- A change can break code it does not touch. When a signature, return value
  or behavior changes, grep every caller.
- Find the expected load in the repo (README, deploy config): one person
  running a script, or many users and processes at once. Judge scale against
  that, and say which load you assumed.

## 2. Look for

1. **Bug:** wrong result, crash, missed edge case (empty, zero, last item,
   rounding, time zones), a caller broken by the change, a fix applied in one
   caller while the shared function stays broken.
2. **Risk:** security holes (injection, weak randomness, secrets, missing
   checks on input from users), data loss (errors swallowed, writes in the
   wrong order, no transaction).
3. **Scale:** fine for one user, wrong for many: check-then-write races, the
Read the full skill on GitHub

Details

Skill name
ponytail-review
Repository
DietrichGebert/ponytail
Path
skills/ponytail-review/SKILL.md
License
MIT
Repo updated
29 October 2026

FAQ

What does the Ponytail Review skill do?

Quality review of a change: is the logic right, is it safe, does it hold under real load, is risky code tested, is it fast enough, and is every line needed. Reads the connected code, not only the diff. Each finding is explained in plain English. Use for "review this", "code review", "review the last commit", "review my PR", "is this over-engineered", /ponytail-review.

How do I install the Ponytail Review skill?

Claude Code plugin: /plugin marketplace add DietrichGebert/ponytail. Skills go in ~/.claude/skills (personal) or .claude/skills (project), and Claude loads them automatically when a task matches the description.

Is Ponytail Review popular?

It lives in DietrichGebert/ponytail, which has 181,225 GitHub stars and 9,958 forks.

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