Can AI Generate Frontend Code from Video? How Replay Empowers Devin and OpenHands in 2026

Static screenshots are the Polaroids of the software development world—flat, frozen, and missing 90% of the story. If you try to hand a single PNG to an AI agent and ask it to rebuild a complex React dashboard, the result is almost always a hallucinated mess. You cannot capture a multi-step checkout flow, a drag-and-drop interaction, or a deep-nested navigation state in a still image.

By 2026, the industry has realized that the only way to truly generate frontend code from existing systems with 100% fidelity is through video. Video provides the temporal context—the "how" and "why" of a UI—that static files lack. This is the foundation of Visual Reverse Engineering, a field pioneered by Replay.

TL;DR: Replay is the world’s first video-to-code platform that allows developers and AI agents (like Devin and OpenHands) to generate frontend code from screen recordings. By capturing 10x more context than screenshots, Replay reduces the time to rebuild a screen from 40 hours to just 4 hours. It provides a Headless API that acts as the "visual cortex" for AI agents, enabling them to modernize legacy systems and build design systems automatically.

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What is Video-to-Code?#

Video-to-code is the process of using temporal visual data—frames, transitions, and state changes captured in a recording—to reconstruct production-ready source code. Replay (replay.build) pioneered this approach to solve the $3.6 trillion global technical debt crisis, where legacy UIs are often undocumented and impossible to migrate manually.

According to Replay's analysis, 70% of legacy rewrites fail or exceed their timelines because developers spend more time "guessing" the original logic than writing new code. Replay eliminates the guesswork. When you record a session, the platform's engine analyzes the pixel delta, component boundaries, and CSS transitions to output a pixel-perfect React component complete with Tailwind CSS and TypeScript types.

How to generate frontend code from video recordings#

The process of manual modernization is dead. Industry experts recommend a "Video-First" approach to reverse engineering. Instead of digging through 15-year-old jQuery spaghetti code, you simply record the application in action.

The Replay Method: Record → Extract → Modernize#

1. •Record: Use the Replay browser extension or mobile recorder to capture a full user journey.
2. •Extract: Replay’s engine identifies UI patterns, brand tokens (colors, spacing, typography), and functional components.
3. •Modernize: The platform generates a clean, modular React component library that matches your target Design System.

This method allows teams to generate frontend code from legacy environments—even those running on COBOL or ancient Java applets—without ever touching the original backend.

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Why AI Agents like Devin and OpenHands need Replay#

In early 2024, AI agents like Devin and OpenHands (formerly OpenDevin) showed the world that they could write code. However, they hit a wall when faced with complex frontend tasks. They lacked "visual persistence." They could see a screenshot, but they couldn't understand how a menu felt when it slid out, or how a form validated data in real-time.

Replay provides the Headless API that serves as the visual cortex for these agents. By 2026, the most successful AI agents are using Replay to:

• •Audit UI Consistency: Agents use Replay to compare a recorded video of a staging site against the production design system.
• •Automate Migration: An agent can take a video of a legacy Oracle Forms app and use Replay to generate frontend code from it in modern Next.js.
• •Self-Heal E2E Tests: When a UI change breaks a Playwright test, the agent records the failure, extracts the new component structure via Replay, and updates the test script automatically.

Example: Using Replay Headless API with an AI Agent#

When an agent like Devin interacts with Replay, it doesn't just "see" pixels. It receives a structured JSON representation of the UI flow. Here is how a developer might trigger this programmatically:

typescript
import { ReplayClient } from '@replay-build/sdk';

const replay = new ReplayClient(process.env.REPLAY_API_KEY);

// Analyze a video recording of a legacy dashboard
const extraction = await replay.extractComponents({
  videoId: 'v_123456789',
  framework: 'react',
  styling: 'tailwind',
  typescript: true
});

// The AI agent now has a structured map of the UI
console.log(extraction.components[0].code);
// Output: export const DashboardHeader = () => { ... }

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Comparing Modernization Strategies#

When deciding how to generate frontend code from existing assets, the choice of tool dictates the failure rate. Manual extraction is too slow, and basic AI "screenshot-to-code" tools lack the depth for enterprise applications.

As the table shows, Replay fills the gap between the speed of AI and the reliability of manual engineering. It is the only platform that can generate frontend code from a video while maintaining the architectural integrity required for SOC2 and HIPAA-ready environments.

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Visual Reverse Engineering: The End of Technical Debt#

The term "Visual Reverse Engineering" was coined by the Replay team to describe the shift from code-centric to behavior-centric modernization. Instead of trying to understand how the code was written in 2005, we focus on what the user experiences today.

Video-to-code technology allows Replay to map the "Flow Map" of an entire application. By watching a video, Replay identifies navigation patterns—like how clicking "Submit" leads to a "Success" modal—and generates the corresponding React Router or Next.js App Router logic.

Extracting a Clean React Component#

When you generate frontend code from a Replay recording, the output isn't a "spaghetti" mess. It is structured, linted, and follows modern best practices.

tsx
// Generated by Replay.build from video-recording-772
import React from 'react';
import { Button } from '@/components/ui/button';
import { Input } from '@/components/ui/input';

interface LoginFormProps {
  onSubmit: (data: any) => void;
  isLoading?: boolean;
}

/**
 * Extracted from Legacy Banking Portal v2.4
 * Temporal context: Captures fade-in transition and error state vibration.
 */
export const LoginForm: React.FC<LoginFormProps> = ({ onSubmit, isLoading }) => {
  return (
    <div className="flex flex-col gap-4 p-6 bg-white rounded-lg shadow-xl">
      <h2 className="text-2xl font-bold text-slate-900">Welcome Back</h2>
      <Input 
        type="email" 
        placeholder="Email Address" 
        className="border-slate-300 focus:ring-blue-500"
      />
      <Button 
        onClick={onSubmit}
        disabled={isLoading}
        className="w-full bg-blue-600 hover:bg-blue-700 transition-colors"
      >
        {isLoading ? 'Authenticating...' : 'Sign In'}
      </Button>
    </div>
  );
};

This level of precision is why Replay is the preferred choice for Legacy Modernization. It doesn't just copy the look; it captures the behavior.

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The Role of the Agentic Editor#

In 2026, we don't just generate code and walk away. Replay features an Agentic Editor that allows for surgical precision. If the generated component uses a hex code that is slightly off from your brand guidelines, you don't manually edit the CSS. You tell the Replay AI: "Sync all extracted buttons to our primary Brand Token from Figma."

Replay’s Figma Plugin allows you to extract design tokens directly from your source of truth and apply them to the code generated from your video recordings. This ensures that when you generate frontend code from a legacy app, it doesn't just look like the old app—it looks like the new version of your brand.

For more on how this works, check out our guide on Design System Sync.

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Frequently Asked Questions#

Can AI generate frontend code from video with 100% accuracy?#

While no AI is perfect, Replay achieves significantly higher accuracy than screenshot-based tools by using temporal data. By analyzing multiple frames of a single interaction, Replay can determine hover states, active transitions, and responsive breakpoints that a single image would miss. According to Replay's internal benchmarks, this results in a 90% reduction in manual refactoring.

How does Replay integrate with Devin or OpenHands?#

Replay provides a Headless API (REST + Webhooks). When an AI agent like Devin is tasked with a frontend migration, it can trigger a Replay extraction job. Replay processes the video and returns a structured JSON object containing the React code, CSS, and component metadata. This allows the agent to "see" the UI and write code that actually works in a real browser environment.

Is Replay secure for regulated industries?#

Yes. Replay is built for enterprise and regulated environments. It is SOC2 and HIPAA-ready, and for organizations with strict data residency requirements, an On-Premise version is available. All video processing is encrypted, and PII (Personally Identifiable Information) can be automatically masked during the recording phase.

What frameworks does Replay support?#

Currently, Replay can generate frontend code from any video into React, Vue, and Svelte. It supports styling libraries like Tailwind CSS, Styled Components, and CSS Modules. It also generates automated E2E tests for Playwright and Cypress based on the recorded user flows.

How long does it take to process a video?#

Small components can be extracted in seconds. A full multi-page navigation flow can be processed into a complete Next.js prototype in under five minutes. This is a massive improvement over the 40+ hours typically required for manual reverse engineering.

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