How can I override the api gradle method?

Question

I want to change the way gradle resolves project dependencies. The way I'm currently doing this is that I define a new method smartProject()that has the same signature as the method project()used in the dependency section:

dependencies {
    compile smartProject(path: ":some:other:project", configuration: "archives")
    ...
}

I would like to override project()it to work magically without having to edit every build.gradle file on the system,