head to head · open source
ponytail vs mini-swe-agent
ponytail has 182,779 GitHub stars, 10,094 forks, 270 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. mini-swe-agent has 9,038 stars, 1,265 forks, 65 open issues and last shipped 8 days ago. ponytail leads on adoption by 1,922% (182,779 vs 9,038 stars). ponytail is written in JavaScript under MIT; mini-swe-agent is written in Python under MIT. ponytail has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, mini-swe-agent 14%. ponytail 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 | mini-swe-agent | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 183K | ★ 9.0K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | JavaScript | Python |
| Last push | 2026-10-29 | 2026-10-26 |
| Forks | ⑂ 10K | ⑂ 1.3K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick ponytail if
- You weight community size — 183K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick mini-swe-agent if
- You want the mini-swe-agent feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and mini-swe-agent fits your workflow better
About ponytail
Ponytail He says nothing. He writes one line. It works. 54% less code (up to 94%) · 20% cheaper · 27% faster · 100% safe Measured on real Claude Code sessions editing a real open source repo (FastAPI + React), against the same agent with no skill. 54% is the mean across 12 feature tasks (Haiku 4.5, n=4); it reaches 94% where an agent over builds (a date picker) and is near zero where the code is already minimal. ponytail keeps every safety guard while a bare "write one liners" prompt drops one. (The earlier single shot benchmark reported 80 94% as a flat figure; against a fair agentic…
read the full ponytail overview →
About mini-swe-agent
The minimal AI software engineering agent 📣 mini swe agent now powers Ramp SWE Bench 📣 mini swe agent beats Claude Code and Codex on DeepSWE 📣 Run mini swe agent on our new & extremely challenging benchmark, ProgramBench 📣 New tutorial on building minimal AI agents [!WARNING] This is mini swe agent v2 . Read the migration guide. For the previous version, check out the v1 branch. In 2024, we built SWE bench & SWE agent and helped kickstart the coding agent revolution. We now ask: What if our agent was 100x simpler, and still worked nearly as well? mini is Widely adopted : Used by Meta, NVIDIA, Essential AI…
read the full mini-swe-agent overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is ponytail or mini-swe-agent more popular?
ponytail has 182,779 GitHub stars and mini-swe-agent has 9,038. ponytail has the larger community by that measure.
Are ponytail and mini-swe-agent free?
Both are open source. ponytail is licensed under MIT and mini-swe-agent under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between ponytail and mini-swe-agent?
ponytail is written in JavaScript and mini-swe-agent in Python. 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 mini-swe-agent?
Choose ponytail if you want the larger community (182,779 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose mini-swe-agent if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.