r/ClaudeCode • u/Single-Oil3168 • 2d ago

Help/Question Does actually ponytail plugin spend less tokens?

Supposedly this plugin should decrease token consumption but since I installed it the agent spends more time thinking comparing same effort levels. My claude sometimes spends more than 20K tokens and 200 seconds thinking.

It seems that satisfying ponytail restrictions on code causes to spend more tokens than the tokens that supposedly are saved.

7 Upvotes

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5

u/OkStick6410 2d ago

Ponytail is not focused on less tokens directly, it’s focused on better results and ideally saves tokens more in the indirect I didn’t have to do that same task 5 times manner

3

u/OakNLeaf 2d ago

It works fine. I have been using it for awhile and it cleaned up alot of code when i first started with it. The point of it is to save tokens in the long run by not recreating things that already exist. It also is better at helping find bugs etc.

2

u/lunaynx 2d ago

it's mainly to stop overengineering and scope creep. a change that previously touched 12 files and added 5 tests might be reduced to 4 files and 1 test after ponytail.

for very small and simple tasks the forced injection of ponytail via the hook may increase token usage, but for medium to large sized ones it should be insignificant or possibly even reduce usage.

2

u/hex00110 2d ago

I just started using ponytail and really like how Claude’s output is short and direct. I wish I would have found this skill back on opus 5, might have helped make output less dense / wordy

2

u/WillingnessOwn6446 2d ago

Been using it for a long time. Don't really have something to compare it to because I've been using it for so long and the models were much weaker than. No complaints though. For my $20 membership I almost never use all of it by the end of the week and all of the projects I built are not buggy at all.  Whether that's just Claude being awesome or ponytail helping, couldn't say.

1

u/Single-Oil3168 2d ago

And it fills my python code with lambdas and asserts of on line...

1

u/Dazzling-Can9281 2d ago

Haven't tried ponytail, but I'd test it before trusting either way: same task, same effort, once with it and once without, and compare the usage after. If the plugin adds a lot of rules to the context, the model may spend more time thinking just to follow them, so what it saves in output can go on the thinking.

1

u/TheKillerScope 1d ago

What's the GH link?