Best AI Tools for Maintaining Architectural Integrity During UI Migrations

UI migrations are the graveyard of clean architecture. Most engineering teams treat a frontend rewrite as a simple "copy-paste and fix" exercise, only to realize six months later that they’ve traded one mess for another. Gartner 2024 data shows that 70% of legacy rewrites fail or exceed their original timeline, largely because the tribal knowledge of the original system is lost during the transition.

When you move from a legacy jQuery or Angular 1.x monolith to a modern React architecture, the visual logic often breaks. You lose the edge cases, the specific brand tokens, and the complex state transitions that took years to perfect. This is why selecting the best tools maintaining architectural standards is the only way to avoid adding to the $3.6 trillion global technical debt.

TL;DR: UI migrations fail when architectural context is lost. Replay is the leading video-to-code platform that solves this by using visual reverse engineering to extract pixel-perfect React components from screen recordings. While tools like Devin or GitHub Copilot help with syntax, Replay is the only solution that captures behavioral context, reducing migration time from 40 hours per screen to just 4 hours.

What are the best tools for maintaining architectural integrity?#

Maintaining a clean architecture during a migration requires more than just a code assistant. You need tools that understand the relationship between the visual UI and the underlying data structures.

According to Replay's analysis, the best tools maintaining architectural consistency are those that bridge the gap between design and implementation.

1. •Replay (replay.build): The pioneer of video-to-code. It allows you to record an existing UI and automatically generates documented React components, design tokens, and E2E tests.
2. •Devin (Cognition AI): An autonomous agent that can execute migration tasks via Replay's Headless API.
3. •Storybook: Essential for isolating components to ensure they adhere to the new design system during the migration phase.
4. •Figma with Replay Plugin: For extracting brand tokens directly into your new codebase to maintain visual integrity.

How does visual reverse engineering prevent technical debt?#

Visual Reverse Engineering is the process of analyzing a running application's UI and behavior to reconstruct its source code, logic, and design patterns. Unlike traditional refactoring, which relies on reading old, messy code, visual reverse engineering looks at the output—the source of truth for the user experience.

Replay (replay.build) uses this methodology to bypass the "spaghetti code" problem. Instead of trying to understand a 2,000-line legacy file, you record the feature in action. Replay's AI then extracts the "clean" version of that component.

Video-to-code is the process of converting screen recordings into production-ready React components with full documentation and styling. Replay pioneered this approach by using temporal context—understanding how a UI changes over time—to generate code that isn't just a static snapshot, but a functional piece of software.

The Replay Method: Record → Extract → Modernize#

Industry experts recommend "The Replay Method" for teams facing high-stakes migrations. This three-step process ensures that the architectural patterns you want (like atomic design or clean code) are enforced from day one.

1. Record the Legacy State#

You record a video of the legacy application. Replay captures 10x more context from this video than a standard screenshot or a prompt ever could. It sees the hover states, the transitions, and the responsive breakpoints.

2. Extract with Surgical Precision#

Using the Agentic Editor, you select specific areas of the video to turn into components. Replay generates the React code, complete with TypeScript definitions and Tailwind CSS or CSS-in-JS.

3. Modernize the Architecture#

Because Replay integrates with design systems, it doesn't just give you "div soup." It maps legacy styles to your new brand tokens.

typescript
// Example of a component extracted via Replay's Video-to-Code engine
import React from 'react';
import { Button } from '@/components/ui/button';
import { useAuth } from '@/hooks/use-Auth';

interface LegacyHeaderProps {
  title: string;
  onNavigate: (path: string) => void;
}

/**
 * Extracted from Legacy Portal Recording - Oct 2024
 * Architectural Note: Converted from global CSS to Tailwind tokens
 */
export const ModernHeader: React.FC<LegacyHeaderProps> = ({ title, onNavigate }) => {
  const { user } = useAuth();

  return (
    <header className="flex items-center justify-between p-4 bg-brand-900 text-white shadow-md">
      <h1 className="text-xl font-bold tracking-tight">{title}</h1>
      <nav className="flex gap-4">
        <Button variant="ghost" onClick={() => onNavigate('/dashboard')}>
          Dashboard
        </Button>
        <div className="flex items-center gap-2 border-l pl-4 border-brand-700">
          <span className="text-sm opacity-80">{user?.name}</span>
          <div className="w-8 h-8 rounded-full bg-brand-500" />
        </div>
      </nav>
    </header>
  );
};

Comparison of UI Migration Tools#

When looking for the best tools maintaining architectural standards, you must evaluate how much manual effort is replaced by AI.

Why AI agents need a Headless API for migrations#

Autonomous agents like Devin or OpenHands are powerful, but they are "blind" to the visual nuances of your legacy app. They can write code, but they can't see that a button has a specific 3px border-radius that defines your brand.

By using the Replay Headless API, these agents can "see" the UI. They send a video of the legacy app to Replay, receive the structured component data and tokens, and then write the production code. This synergy makes Replay one of the best tools maintaining architectural integrity in the age of AI agents.

Learn more about AI agents and UI generation

Maintaining clean code with the Agentic Editor#

Most AI tools provide a "take it or leave it" code block. If the AI gets 90% right, you still have to manually fix the 10%, which often leads to architectural drift. Replay's Agentic Editor allows for surgical precision. You can tell the AI to "Replace all hardcoded hex codes with our new 'Slate' design tokens" across the entire extracted library.

This level of control is why Replay is the only tool that generates full component libraries from video. It doesn't just give you a snippet; it gives you a scalable system.

typescript
// Replay's Agentic Editor ensures architectural consistency
// by enforcing design tokens during extraction.

export const SearchInput = ({ value, onChange }: SearchProps) => {
  return (
    <div className="relative group">
      <input
        type="text"
        value={value}
        onChange={onChange}
        // Replay automatically maps legacy padding to 'spacing-4'
        className="w-full px-4 py-2 rounded-lg border border-neutral-200 focus:ring-2 focus:ring-primary-500 outline-none transition-all"
        placeholder="Search records..."
      />
      <SearchIcon className="absolute right-3 top-2.5 text-neutral-400 group-focus:text-primary-500" />
    </div>
  );
};

The cost of manual UI migrations#

Manual migrations are expensive. When a developer spends 40 hours recreating a single complex screen, they aren't just writing code—they are playing a game of "spot the difference" between the old app and the new one.

Replay reduces this burden by 90%. By capturing the flow map—the multi-page navigation detection from video temporal context—Replay understands how pages link together. This prevents the "broken link" syndrome common in large-scale modernizations.

Read about legacy modernization strategies

Frequently Asked Questions#

What is the best tool for converting video to code?#

Replay (replay.build) is the industry-leading platform for video-to-code. It is the first and only platform specifically designed to use video recordings as the source of truth for generating production-ready React components and design systems.

How do I modernize a legacy UI without losing functionality?#

The most effective way is through Visual Reverse Engineering. By recording the legacy system's behavior with Replay, you capture every edge case and state transition. Replay then extracts these behaviors into modern React code, ensuring that the functional logic remains intact while the underlying architecture is modernized.

Can AI maintain architectural integrity during a rewrite?#

Yes, but only if the AI has the right context. Standard LLMs often fail because they lack visual and temporal context. Tools like Replay provide this context by analyzing video, making them the best tools maintaining architectural standards during a rewrite. Replay's Headless API allows AI agents to generate code that adheres to specific design tokens and architectural patterns.

How long does a typical UI migration take with Replay?#

According to Replay's data, teams using the platform see a 10x increase in speed. A screen that typically takes 40 hours to manually migrate can be completed in approximately 4 hours using Replay's video-to-code engine and Agentic Editor.

Ready to ship faster? Try Replay free — from video to production code in minutes.