The hope is that this extension will be able to avoid upgrades, possibly forever, simply pulling the latest version of replacements from this repo on every startup. Because of this, an expressive format is required for replacements.
Replacements are an array of replacement objects. Each replacement object consists of two or three entries: pattern, replacement, and strictCaps.
pattern is a string which is converted to a regular expression. The i (ignore-caps) flag is used when reading the pattern expression, so don't worry about correct capitalization for the pattern field.
replacement is an object which contains a text field, which is inserted as the replacement for the pattern text. The reason it is an object instead of a string is so that more functionality may be added in later versions, such as external urls and other such fun things. The replacement text is inserted literally, with one exception: expressions in the form $x, where x is a number from 1-9, will be replaced by the matching subexpression in pattern. $$ is ignored, however, so ensure you line up the correct number of $ characters. You can have multiple instances of the same subexpression in the text field.
If strictCaps is set to false or undefined, when the first letter of the match is capitalized, all words in the replacement text have their first letter capitalized. If true, the capitalization of the replacement text is always exactly what is given in replacements.json.