head to head · open source
ponytail vs cli
ponytail has 141,230 GitHub stars, 7,572 forks, 270 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. cli has 31,034 stars, 1,840 forks, 131 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. ponytail leads on adoption by 355% (141,230 vs 31,034 stars). ponytail is written in JavaScript under MIT; cli is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. ponytail has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, cli 6%. cli was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (agent-skills), 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 | cli | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 141K | ★ 31K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | JavaScript | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-14 | 2026-09-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 7.6K | ⑂ 1.8K |
| 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 cli if
- You want the cli feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and cli 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 cli
gws is a command line tool for Google Workspace, written in Rust and released under the Apache 2.0 license. It provides a single interface for Drive, Gmail, Calendar, Sheets, Docs, Chat, Admin, and the wider set of Workspace APIs. Rather than shipping a fixed list of commands, it reads Google's own Discovery Service at runtime and builds its entire command surface dynamically, so new API endpoints and methods appear without a CLI release. The project lives in the Google Workspace ecosystem and is explicitly not an officially supported Google product.
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Frequently asked questions
Is ponytail or cli more popular?
ponytail has 141,230 GitHub stars and cli has 31,034. ponytail has the larger community by that measure.
Are ponytail and cli free?
Both are open source. ponytail is licensed under MIT and cli under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between ponytail and cli?
ponytail is written in JavaScript and cli in Rust. 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 cli?
Choose ponytail if you want the larger community (141,230 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose cli if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.