Shorter Is Not Automatically Better: What We Learned Benchmarking Coding-Agent Skills

Coding agents waste tokens in obvious ways. They explain code that already explains itself. They create helpers for one call site. They add a dependency before checking the standard library. The first response to that waste was simple: tell the agent to be shorter. Caveman applies that idea to prose. Ponytail applies it to code. Both identified a real frustration for developers, and both became popular because the problem is easy to recognize. But shorter output is not one problem. A utility…