head to head · open source
ponytail vs claude-mem
ponytail has 141,230 GitHub stars, 7,572 forks, 270 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. claude-mem has 94,125 stars, 8,305 forks, 186 open issues and last shipped yesterday. ponytail leads on adoption by 50% (141,230 vs 94,125 stars). ponytail is written in JavaScript under MIT; claude-mem is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. ponytail has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, claude-mem 9%. claude-mem was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 4 topic tags (ai-agents, claude, claude-code, claude-code-plugin), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| ponytail | claude-mem | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 141K | ★ 94K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | JavaScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-14 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 7.6K | ⑂ 8.3K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick ponytail if
- You weight community size — 141K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick claude-mem if
- You want the claude-mem feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and claude-mem fits your workflow better
About ponytail
Ponytail is an open source agent skill for JavaScript and LLM based coding tools that makes an AI agent write the minimum working code for a task, and it is built for developers and teams running agents such as Claude Code, Codex, or Cursor against real repositories.
read the full ponytail overview →
About claude-mem
claude mem is an Apache 2.0 TypeScript memory layer for AI coding agents that captures what an agent did during a session, compresses it with AI, and injects the relevant parts back into future sessions, built for developers running Claude Code, OpenClaw, Codex, Gemini, Hermes, Copilot, OpenCode and similar tools.
read the full claude-mem overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is ponytail or claude-mem more popular?
ponytail has 141,230 GitHub stars and claude-mem has 94,125. ponytail has the larger community by that measure.
Are ponytail and claude-mem free?
Both are open source. ponytail is licensed under MIT and claude-mem under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between ponytail and claude-mem?
ponytail is written in JavaScript and claude-mem in TypeScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, ponytail or claude-mem?
Choose ponytail if you want the larger community (141,230 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose claude-mem if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.