Code review focused exclusively on over-engineering. Finds what to delete: reinvented standard library, unneeded dependencies, speculative abstractions, dead flexibility. One line per finding: location, what to cut, what replaces it. Use when the user says "review for over-engineering", "what can we

Review diffs for unnecessary complexity. One line per finding: location, what to cut, what replaces it. The diff's best outcome is getting shorter. Format L<line : <tag <what . <replacement . , or <file :L<line : ... for multi file diffs. Tags: delete: dead code, unused flexibility, speculative feature. Replacement: nothing. stdlib: hand rolled thing the standard library ships. Name the function. native: dependency or code doing what the platform already does. Name the feature. yagni: abstraction with one implementation, config nobody sets, layer with one caller. shrink: same logic, fewer lines. Show the shorter form. Examples ❌ "This EmailValidator class might be more complex than necessary, have you considered whether all these validation rules are needed at this stage?" ✅ L12 38: stdlib: 27 line validator class. "@" in email, 1 line, real validation is the confirmation mail. ✅ L4: native: moment.js imported for one format call. Intl.DateTimeFormat, 0 deps. ✅ repo.py:L88: yagni: AbstractRepository with one implementation. Inline it until a second one exists. ✅ L52 71: delete: retry wrapper around an idempotent local call. Nothing replaces it. ✅ L30 44: shrink: manual loop builds dict. dict(zip(keys, values)), 1 line. Scoring End with the only metric that matters: net: <N lines possible. If there is nothing to cut, say Lean already. Ship. and stop. Boundaries Scope: over engineering and complexity only. Correctness bugs, security holes, and performance are explicitly out of scope. Route them to a normal review pass, not this one. A single smoke test or assert based self check is the ponytail minimum, not bloat, never flag it for deletion. Does not apply the fixes, only lists them. "stop ponytail review" or "normal mode": revert to verbose review style.

ponytail-review