Automated Intent Capture: How to Document Business Logic Before the Experts Depart

$3.6 trillion. That is the estimated global cost of technical debt, and most of it is buried in "black box" legacy systems that no one currently employed understands. When your lead architect retires or your last COBOL-literate developer leaves, they don't just take their salary with them—they take the undocumented business logic that powers your core revenue streams.

The industry standard for dealing with this has been "Software Archaeology": paying expensive consultants to manually click through screens, interview frustrated users, and attempt to reconstruct requirements from 15-year-old spaghetti code. It’s a process that takes 40 hours per screen and results in a 70% failure rate for big-bang rewrites.

The alternative is Automated Intent Capture. Instead of guessing what a system does by looking at dead code, we capture what it does by observing live execution.

TL;DR: Automated Intent Capture uses visual reverse engineering to transform real-time user workflows into documented React components and API contracts, reducing modernization timelines by 70% and eliminating the risk of tribal knowledge loss.

The Archaeology Trap: Why 67% of Systems Lack Documentation#

Enterprise systems in Financial Services, Healthcare, and Government suffer from "Documentation Decay." As systems evolve over decades, the gap between the written requirements and the actual production behavior widens until the code is the only source of truth—and even the code is often too obfuscated to read.

The "Big Bang" rewrite fails because it attempts to replicate 20 years of edge cases in 18 months. Without a way to capture the intent of the original system, developers end up "bug-for-bug" compatible or, worse, missing critical regulatory logic entirely.

What is Automated Intent Capture?#

Automated Intent Capture is the process of recording a user's interaction with a legacy system and using AI-driven visual reverse engineering to decompose that session into its constituent parts: UI components, state management logic, API schemas, and validation rules.

By using Replay, organizations can record a subject matter expert (SME) performing a standard workflow—like processing an insurance claim or a wire transfer—and immediately generate a documented, modernized version of that specific flow.

The Technical Mechanism#

Unlike simple screen recording, Replay captures the DOM state, network calls, and event listeners. It then passes this "session trace" through an AI Automation Suite that maps visual elements to a modern Design System.

typescript
// Example: Replay-generated React component from a legacy JSP capture
// The logic is extracted from observed state transitions during recording.

import React, { useState, useEffect } from 'react';
import { Button, TextField, Alert } from '@enterprise-ds/core'; // From your Replay Library

export const ClaimsProcessor = ({ initialData }) => {
  const [claimStatus, setClaimStatus] = useState(initialData.status);
  const [error, setError] = useState(null);

  // Logic captured from legacy "Validate" button click behavior
  const handleValidation = async (values) => {
    const isValid = await legacyApiBridge.validate(values);
    if (!isValid) {
      setError("Regulatory Rule 402: Missing Provider NPI");
    }
  };

  return (
    <div className="p-6 space-y-4">
      <TextField 
        label="Provider ID" 
        defaultValue={initialData.providerId} 
        onChange={handleValidation}
      />
      {error && <Alert severity="error">{error}</Alert>}
      <Button variant="primary">Submit for Review</Button>
    </div>
  );
};

⚠️ Warning: Relying on manual interviews for logic capture is a recipe for disaster. Users often forget the "invisible" steps they take—the workarounds they've used for a decade that have become muscle memory.

The 4-Step Workflow to Document Before Departure#

If your key experts are slated to retire or transition in the next 6-12 months, you are in a race against time. Here is how to use Replay to institutionalize their knowledge.

Step 1: Workflow Identification and Prioritization#

Identify the top 20% of workflows that handle 80% of the business value. In a banking context, this might be "Account Opening" or "Loan Modification." Use Replay’s Flows feature to map out the high-level architecture of these processes.

Step 2: Session Recording (The Source of Truth)#

Have the expert perform the task while Replay records the session in the background. Because Replay is built for regulated environments (SOC2, HIPAA-ready), sensitive data can be masked during this process. This recording becomes the "Source of Truth" for the reverse engineering engine.

Step 3: Automated Extraction and Blueprinting#

Replay’s Blueprints editor analyzes the recording. It identifies:

• •UI Components: Buttons, inputs, tables, and modals.
• •State Logic: How the UI changes in response to data.
• •API Contracts: The underlying data structures the legacy system expects.

Step 4: Component Generation and Testing#

The platform generates clean, modular React code that mirrors the legacy behavior but uses modern best practices. Simultaneously, it generates E2E tests (Cypress/Playwright) to ensure the new component behaves exactly like the recorded session.

typescript
// Generated E2E Test to ensure parity with legacy behavior
describe('Claims Processing Workflow Parity', () => {
  it('should trigger validation error on missing NPI, matching legacy session #842', () => {
    cy.visit('/modernized-claims');
    cy.get('[data-testid="provider-id"]').type('123');
    cy.get('[data-testid="submit-btn"]').click();
    cy.contains('Regulatory Rule 402').should('be.visible');
  });
});

💰 ROI Insight: Manual documentation of a complex 50-screen application typically takes 2,000 hours. Replay reduces this to 200 hours, saving approximately $270,000 in engineering time alone, not accounting for the cost of errors avoided.

Preserving Logic in Regulated Industries#

In industries like Insurance or Telecom, business logic is often buried in hard-coded "if-else" chains within 20-year-old monoliths. Automated Intent Capture doesn't just look at the code; it looks at the result of the code.

If a specific combination of inputs in a legacy healthcare portal triggers a "High Risk" flag, Replay captures that state transition. Even if the original developer is gone, the intent—the fact that Input A + Input B = Flag C—is preserved and documented.

• •Financial Services: Capture complex trade reconciliation logic.
• •Healthcare: Document patient intake flows without violating HIPAA.
• •Manufacturing: Map out legacy ERP inventory management screens.

💡 Pro Tip: Use the Replay Library feature to centralize your extracted components. This creates a "Living Design System" that bridges the gap between your legacy UI and your future state architecture.

From Black Box to Documented Codebase#

The "Future of Modernization" is not a 24-month rewrite project that gets canceled halfway through. The future is an incremental, evidence-based transition. By using video as the source of truth, you eliminate the "he-said, she-said" of requirements gathering.

Replay allows you to move from a black box to a documented codebase in weeks. You aren't just modernizing the UI; you are auditing your technical debt and generating the documentation that should have been written two decades ago.

• •70% time savings on average compared to manual rewrites.
• •Days/Weeks instead of 18-24 months for initial modernization.
• •On-Premise available for high-security government and defense needs.

Frequently Asked Questions#

How does Replay handle complex back-end logic?#

Replay captures the "Intent" at the UI and API layer. While it doesn't "read" your COBOL or Mainframe code directly, it observes the inputs sent to those systems and the outputs they return. This allows you to create an API Contract that mimics the legacy system, enabling a "Strangler Fig" approach where you replace the backend services one by one while keeping the UI consistent.

What if our legacy system is a desktop app (Citrix/Mainframe)?#

Replay is optimized for web-based legacy systems (Java/JSP, .NET, PHP, Delphi-web). For terminal-based or thick-client systems, we offer specialized extraction modules that use OCR and screen-scraping logic to map intents, though the fidelity is highest with web-rendered DOMs.

Does this replace our developers?#

No. Replay is a "force multiplier" for your Enterprise Architects and Senior Developers. It handles the "grunt work" of reverse engineering—identifying components, mapping CSS, and drafting API schemas—so your team can focus on high-level architecture and new feature development.

Is the generated code maintainable?#

Yes. Replay generates standard React/TypeScript code using modern hooks and functional components. It does not produce "machine-code" or obfuscated scripts. The output is designed to be checked into your Git repository and maintained by your team just like any other hand-written code.

How do we handle PII/PHI during the recording?#

Replay includes a robust PII masking engine. Before a session is processed by the AI Automation Suite, sensitive fields can be redacted at the DOM level, ensuring that your modernization efforts remain compliant with SOC2 and HIPAA requirements.

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Ready to modernize without rewriting? Book a pilot with Replay - see your legacy screen extracted live during the call.