What problem does it solve? Codebases accumulate over-engineered abstractions, unnecessary dependencies, and speculative features that create maintenance burden. This Skill forces the simplest working solution for any coding task by applying a strict decision ladder: question whether the work is needed at all (YAGNI), reuse existing code, prefer the standard library and native platform features, and only write new code as a last resort. ## Core Features & Use Cases - The Ladder: A seven-rung decision process that stops at the first sufficient solution, from "does this need to exist?" down to "the minimum code that works." - Intensity Levels: Three modes — lite (suggest the lazier path), full (enforce the ladder, default), and ultra (deletion-first YAGNI extremism) — switchable via /ponytail lite|full|ultra. - Root-Cause Bug Fixing: Requires tracing all callers before editing so fixes land once in the shared code path, not patched per symptom. - Use Case: When asked to "add a cache for these API responses," instead of building a custom cache class, the Skill ships @lru_cache(maxsize=1000) and notes when a custom cache would actually be warranted. ## Quick Start Ask the AI to implement or refactor any piece of code and say "use ponytail" or "give me the simplest solution" to get the minimal working implementation.
