head to head · open source
ponytail vs feynman
ponytail has 145,605 GitHub stars, 7,806 forks, 270 open issues and last shipped 11 days ago. feynman has 9,781 stars, 1,087 forks, 1 open issues and last shipped today. ponytail leads on adoption by 1,389% (145,605 vs 9,781 stars). ponytail is written in JavaScript under MIT; feynman is written in TypeScript under MIT. ponytail has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, feynman 11%. feynman was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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 | feynman | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 146K | ★ 9.8K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | JavaScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-14 | 2026-09-25 |
| Forks | ⑂ 7.8K | ⑂ 1.1K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick ponytail if
- You weight community size — 146K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick feynman if
- You want the feynman feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and feynman 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 feynman
Feynman is the open source AI research agent: an MIT licensed TypeScript command line tool that searches papers and the web and answers with cited sources, aimed at researchers, engineers, and research groups.
read the full feynman overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is ponytail or feynman more popular?
ponytail has 145,605 GitHub stars and feynman has 9,781. ponytail has the larger community by that measure.
Are ponytail and feynman free?
Both are open source. ponytail is licensed under MIT and feynman under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between ponytail and feynman?
ponytail is written in JavaScript and feynman 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 feynman?
Choose ponytail if you want the larger community (145,605 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose feynman if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.