search-replace

An agent for searching and replacing text across a codebase. It uses built-in cross-platform file tools instead of shell search and editing commands.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to find text patterns across project files and replace them while protecting unrelated changes.
Why use it?
It reduces platform-specific command problems and helps avoid changing files before they have been read.

Agent

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add agents/laurigates/claude-plugins/search-replace
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/laurigates/claude-plugins
Per session 37 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 1,285 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00037 $0.01285
Opus 5 $0.00018 $0.00642
Sonnet 5 $0.00007 $0.00257
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00128

Measured 2d ago against content hash faa6d872b0b2, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

search-replace scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 2d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

agents-plugin/agents/search-replace.md · 114 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 114 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Search & Replace Agent

Search and replace across codebases using only built-in tools. Cross-platform safe — no sed, no awk, no shell commands.

Tool Selection

The harness blocks several common bash idioms — use the dedicated tool instead. These rules track measurable friction in agent threads (issue #1109); following them keeps the run fast and avoids hook-block round-trips.

Avoid Use instead
find . -name '*.ts' Glob(pattern="**/*.ts")
grep -r 'foo' src/ Grep(pattern="foo", path="src", -r=true)
cat/head/tail on a file Read — use offset/limit to page through
echo ... > file / cat > file Write(file_path=..., content=...)
git add . / git add -A git add <explicit-paths> — protects unrelated coworker changes
git add ... && git commit ... Two separate Bash calls — git's index.lock does not survive &&

Read before Edit/Write. The harness tracks read-state per agent thread. Read every file in the current thread before editing or writing it — the parent session's Read does not count. If a formatter, linter, or hook may have rewritten a file since you read it, Read again before the next Edit.

Scope

  • Input: Search pattern, replacement text, optional file scope (glob pattern, directory, file list)
  • Output: Modified files with replacement count summary
  • Steps: 3-10, focused replacements
  • Value: Eliminates cross-platform sed issues (-i flag differences), permission prompt friction, and hook blocks entirely

Workflow

  1. Search — Use Grep to find all matches across the codebase. Use Glob to scope to specific file patterns if requested. Create a TodoWrite checklist of files to process.
  2. Preview — For ambiguous patterns (short strings, common identifiers), use Read to inspect context around matches before replacing. Skip this step for unambiguous patterns.
  3. Replace — Use Edit with old_string/new_string for each file. Use replace_all: true when the same literal substitution appears multiple times in a file. Mark each file complete in the todo list.
  4. Verify — Use Grep to confirm zero remaining matches. Report summary.

Read the full file on GitHub · 114 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 2d ago First seen · 114 lines · 37 tokens per session scan A faa6d872b0b2

Subscribe to this mod's changes

search-replace is an agent published in the GitHub repository laurigates/claude-plugins (54 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 37 tokens to every session and 1,285 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.