An idea-generation method for finding parts of a process, product, or situation that could be replaced with alternatives. It considers materials, methods, roles, places, times, and technology.

Use it to explore replacements for components, processes, people, settings, or technologies. It organizes each current element, possible substitute, and resulting possibility.

It helps break the assumption that something must be done in its current way. Comparing substitutes can reveal different outcomes or new possibilities.

substitute — Command by neurofoo

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 commands/neurofoo/agent-skills/substitute

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/neurofoo/agent-skills

Per session 0 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.

When invoked 411 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.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5	$0.00000	$0.00411
Opus 5	$0.00000	$0.00205
Sonnet 5	$0.00000	$0.00082
Haiku 4.5	$0.00000	$0.00041

Measured 3d ago against content hash 3f269e3b7c1c, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

substitute 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 3d 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.

scamper/commands/substitute.md · 73 lines

What it actually says

SUBSTITUTE

Generate ideas by asking what could be replaced or substituted with something else.

Instructions

Identify components that could be swapped for alternatives. Consider materials, processes, people, places, times, approaches.

Output Format

Subject: [What we're exploring]

Substitution Analysis

What are the current components/elements?

[Component 1]
[Component 2]
[Component 3]
[Component 4]

Substitution Ideas

Materials/Ingredients

Current	Substitute	New Possibility
[material]	[alternative]	[what it enables]
[material]	[alternative]	[what it enables]

Process/Approach

Current Way	Different Way	Benefit
[process]	[alternative]	[what it enables]
[process]	[alternative]	[what it enables]

People/Roles

Current Role	Different Role	Possibility
[who does it]	[who else could]	[what changes]

Place/Time/Context

Current Context	Different Context	Possibility
[where/when]	[elsewhere/another time]	[what changes]

Technology

Current Tech	Alternative Tech	Possibility
[technology]	[different tech]	[what it enables]

Prompting Questions

What materials or ingredients can I substitute?
What other process could work?
Who else could do this?
Where else could this happen?
What if we substituted the time?
What's an unconventional substitute?

Top Substitution Ideas

[Best idea]
[Second idea]
[Third idea]

$ARGUMENTS

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.

3d ago First seen · 73 lines · 0 tokens per session scan A 3f269e3b7c1c

Subscribe to this mod's changes

substitute is a command published in the GitHub repository neurofoo/agent-skills (111 stars, last pushed 7mo ago), licensed MIT. It costs nothing until one of its globs matches a file; then it loads 411 tokens. 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.

Creative and media

substitute