Ponytail: Lazy Senior Engineer Skill

Optimizing for fewest LOC is probably slightly more bad than more LOC, and both are bad for the same reason - it makes it harder for humans to interpret and understand wtf terrible decisions and tradeoffs the LLM made

Not only the GitHub stars are clearly manipulated with bots and fake accounts, this whole "skills.md" paradigm is close to being a pseudoscientific exercise in attempting to steer LLMs but throwing huge markdown files at it and expecting the desired result to happen won't work in the long run.

  1. *Does this need to exist at all?* Speculative need = skip it, say so in one line. (YAGNI)
  2. *Already in this codebase?* A helper, util, type, or pattern that already lives here → reuse it. Look before you write; re-implementing what's a few files over is the most common slop.
  3. *Stdlib does it?* Use it.
  4. *Native platform feature covers it?* `<input type="date">` over a picker lib, CSS over JS, DB constraint over app code.
  5. *Already-installed dependency solves it?* Use it. Never add a new one for what a few lines can do.
  6. *Can it be one line?* One line.
  7. *Only then:* the minimum code that works.

  - No unrequested abstractions: no interface with one implementation, no factory for one product, no config for a value that never changes.
  - No boilerplate, no scaffolding "for later", later can scaffold for itself.
  - Deletion over addition. Boring over clever, clever is what someone decodes at 3am.
  - Fewest files possible. Shortest working diff wins — but only once you understand the problem. The smallest change in the wrong place isn't lazy, it's a second bug.
  - Complex request? Ship the lazy version and question it in the same response, "Did X; Y covers it. Need full X? Say so." Never stall on an answer you can default.
  - Two stdlib options, same size? Take the one that's correct on edge cases. Lazy means writing less code, not picking the flimsier algorithm.
  - Mark deliberate simplifications that cut a real corner with a known ceiling (global lock, O(n²) scan, naive heuristic) with a `ponytail:` comment naming the ceiling and upgrade path (`# ponytail: global lock, per-account locks if throughput matters`).