Even if you do something with word replacement, having a GIF selector seems like a good idea, as it’s not limited to the set defined by admins.
On BCharts, they used discourse-reactions with custom emojis to have reactions with mini-memes, but they are not animated and are quite small.
Hmmm, thinking about it, there’s a theme component that does almost what you want (considering the scope that words are defined only by admins): Auto-Linkify Words
I only changed it to create images instead of links, there isn’t even the pause/resume from Discourse Gifs, the rest of the code is absolutely identical to the original theme component, but you can install it if you want to try it out: GitHub - renato/discourse-imgify-words: theme to auto imgify urls in discourse, almost the same as discourse-linkify-works
Example with
chorolivre, https://media0.giphy.com/media/k61nOBRRBMxva/200.webp
palmas, https://media0.giphy.com/media/26gsspfbt1HfVQ9va/200.webp
in the words to imgify configuration:
Note that it’s a theme component, not a plugin, so the installation should follow this guide, and also because of this, the replacement is done only in the web interface; in email or anywhere else the original word will appear.
Zero guarantee from my side, okay? It was a quick test and it’s something I might find useful in my community, but unfortunately, I can’t provide support or other customizations at the moment (for that, keep the suggestion to post in Marketplace).