dsh-ponytail-sync

Ponytail lazy-senior-dev mode as a native DeepSeek Harness skill, system-prompt section and six slash commands. Always available, level-switchable, no external process.

Install

From the GUI, paste this into Add plugin:

dsh-ponytail-sync

Or from a terminal:

dsh plugin add dsh-ponytail-sync

That is a plain npm install. It needs neither git nor a GitHub account.

No build step is involved, so nothing needs a build allowlist and every entry point ships as committed source. Restart the profile and four rows appear — the runtime, the skill, the prompt section and the commands.

Other routes

Route	Command
Pinned to a version	dsh plugin add dsh-ponytail-sync@1.0.0
Pinned to a commit	dsh plugin add github:mirelconstantin/dsh-ponytail-sync#<sha>
Tarball	dsh plugin add ./dsh-ponytail-sync-1.0.0.tgz
Local checkout	dsh plugin add /absolute/path/to/dsh-ponytail-sync

The GitHub routes need nothing but git access to this repository. The npm route needs neither git nor an account, and is what the command above uses.

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What it is

Ponytail by Dietrich Gebert, MIT licensed. It is one instruction prompt plus a handful of one-shot command prompts; everything else in that repository is plumbing that loads the prompt into a particular agent. This bundle ships the prompt into DeepSeek Harness as a skill and as a system-prompt section, so it is present in every session without anyone installing a plugin.

Upstream is the source of truth for the rules. This bundle vendors upstream ponytail 5.1.0 with the review, audit and ledger procedures folded in from the three upstream command skills, and scripts/check-plugin.mjs pins the same ten rule invariants upstream's own scripts/check-rule-copies.js pins — so a silent upstream rule change cannot pass unnoticed.

Why a skill and not an AGENTS.md file

dsh-agent-instructions already loads ~/.dsh/AGENTS.md into every session, and a compact copy of the rules there would work. Three things make the skill the better home:

• It is loadable on demand. A user-agents copy at rank 500 competes with the per-project file; a runtime registration at rank 250 lets a project's own ponytail skill override it, which is the behaviour a user editing one repository expects.
• It carries a description that routes it. The catalog shows the description to the model before it loads anything, so the model knows when the mode applies instead of seeing an unconditional block of rules.
• It is inspectable and editable. assets/ponytail/SKILL.md is one file a maintainer can read and edit; editing it changes what the next session sees after a plugin reload. (The prompt section is not generated from it — the section is deliberately short, and carries the level rather than the rules.)

What it gives a model

A ponytail skill and a ponytail system-prompt section. The section states the active level, what the level changes, and the two lines every reply owes the user. The skill body is the full ruleset with the level tables.

Levels

Level	Behaviour
lite	Build what was asked, name the smaller option in one line
full	The complete ruleset (default)
ultra	Also question the request before building

The default for new sessions is cordis.patch.yml's ponytail-runtime.config.defaultLevel. A session that changes level keeps that level for the rest of the session, which is what upstream's session-scoped mode does. Changing the default for new sessions is a patch-file edit, not a live Settings row: this bundle ships a plain Standard Schema config, and only a native Schemastery schema renders a Settings form. A plugin must not import @deepseek-ai/schemastery itself, so the row reports unsupported rather than failing the load.

Commands

Command	What it does
/ponytail [lite|full|ultra|off]	Set the level for this session, or report it with no argument
/ponytail-review	Review the current change: bugs, security, load, missing tests, speed, what to cut
/ponytail-audit	The same review for the whole repository, ranked
/ponytail-debt	Harvest shortcut: comments into a ledger
/ponytail-gain	The measured-impact scoreboard
/ponytail-help	Quick reference card

Files

package.json        the package and its dsh bundle declaration
cordis.patch.yml    the four loader rows
src/index.js        the service entry (provides `ponytail`)
src/config.js       the Config schema, defaults, resolution, level helpers
src/util.js         the config validator and clamping helpers
src/runtime.js      the per-session level and the section text renderer
src/prompt.js       the system-prompt section text and the visibility gate
src/skills.js       the runtime skill registration
src/commands.js     the six slash commands and their one-shot instructions
src/entry-prompt.js the prompt row
src/entry-skill.js  the skill row
src/entry-command.js the command row
assets/ponytail/SKILL.md the vendored ponytail skill body
scripts/check-plugin.mjs  the plugin contract, against a fake context

Enabling it in a profile

The plugin is a bundle: package.json declares dsh.bundle.patch, and the profile lists it in both dependencies and dsh.profile.bundles. dsh plugin add does both edits for you.

// profiles/<name>/package.json
"dependencies": { "dsh-ponytail-sync": "1.0.0" },
"dsh": { "profile": { "bundles": ["@deepseek-ai/dsh-base", "dsh-ponytail-sync"] } }

A checkout can be linked instead, with the bundle name and the directory left as whatever they are:

"dependencies": { "dsh-ponytail-sync": "link:/absolute/path/to/dsh-ponytail-sync" },
"dsh": { "profile": { "bundles": ["@deepseek-ai/dsh-base", "dsh-ponytail-sync"] } }

Then restart DSH once before it resolves. Editing package.json while DSH is running does not make the bundle resolvable: dsh-app-boot's resolveBundleDir probes the node_modules lookup order from the installation anchor and the profile directory, and a running host holds the profile manifest it read at launch. Until the link exists, adding the bundle produces exactly:

dsh: cannot resolve profile bundle "dsh-ponytail-sync" from the dsh installation or <profileDir>;
run 'dsh plugin --profile <name> install' if its dependency is not installed

That install command materialises the link; the restart makes the running host read the new manifest. Do both, then hard-refresh the browser (Ctrl + Shift + R).

To turn the mode off without removing the bundle, set defaultLevel: off in the ponytail-runtime row's config — the skill, the section and the commands stay mounted, and the rules become available on demand through the skill tool.

Verifying it

npm test                    # the plugin contract: levels, section, skills, commands, packaging
node scripts/check-patch.mjs   # the bundle patch, exports and icon match the package
node scripts/check-pack.mjs    # npm would publish every file the plugin needs

The check asserts what a harness does at load time that a hand-mounted test cannot: no default export (the loader unwraps .default in preference to the namespace, which silently drops inject, name and Config and leaves every dependent row pending), that the registrations are effects, that the section suppresses itself when the skill registry is absent or a restriction filtered the skill away, that the level is per session and the budget is actually applied, that all six commands register with a description and a non-empty hint, and that the load-bearing upstream rules survive verbatim in the vendored skill body.

check-pack covers a gap the tests cannot: they run against the repository, while a files entry that stops matching its tree would publish a package that installs and then fails to load.

CI runs the tests and both package checks on Linux and Windows on every push and pull request.

Updating from upstream

Vendor skills/ponytail/SKILL.md into assets/ponytail/SKILL.md, fold in any new upstream command skill you want available, then re-run npm test. It fails when an upstream rule the check pins has moved, which is the prompt to re-read the upstream diff rather than to edit the pinned list.

License

This bundle is MIT — see LICENSE. Ponytail is MIT, © Dietrich Gebert, and is vendored here as instruction text with its attribution and upstream reference intact; NOTICE carries that attribution. icon.svg is the Pazalo mark.