Can Replay Recreate Complex CSS Grid Layouts From Just a Screen Recording?

Most frontend developers spend 40% of their time fighting with CSS Grid layouts that "look right" but break under the slightest pressure. You find a beautiful layout on a site, open the inspector, and get buried in a mountain of obfuscated class names and nested

elements. Manually reverse-engineering these layouts is a slow, error-prone process that drains engineering resources.

Replay (replay.build) changes this dynamic. By using video as the primary data source, Replay captures the temporal behavior of a UI—how it stretches, how items reflow, and how the grid-gap responds to viewport changes.

TL;DR: Yes, Replay can recreate complex CSS grid layouts from a screen recording with pixel-perfect accuracy. While traditional tools struggle with implicit grids and fractional units, Replay's AI-powered engine analyzes video frames to extract the underlying structural logic. This reduces the time spent on manual recreation from 40 hours per screen to just 4 hours, generating production-ready React code and clean Tailwind CSS or styled-components.

How does Replay recreate complex grid structures?#

Traditional "screenshot-to-code" tools fail because a single image lacks context. A static image doesn't tell you if a column is

, , or a fixed . It doesn't show how the shift during a window resize.

Visual Reverse Engineering is the process of using AI to analyze the visual output of a software system to reconstruct its original source code and architectural logic. Replay pioneered this approach by moving beyond static images to video-first analysis.

When you record a UI, Replay’s engine tracks the movement of every element. It identifies parent-child relationships and calculates the constraints of the grid system. According to Replay's analysis, video provides 10x more context than screenshots, allowing the AI to distinguish between a flexbox layout and a complex CSS Grid.

The Replay Method: Record → Extract → Modernize#

1. •Record: Capture a 30-second video of the UI in action, including interactions and window resizing.
2. •Extract: Replay’s Headless API identifies the grid containers, tracks, and alignment properties.
3. •Modernize: The platform generates a clean React component library with documented tokens.

Can Replay handle nested grids and subgrids?#

Nesting is where manual coding becomes a nightmare. A

inside a often leads to "div soup" that is impossible to maintain. When you use replay recreate complex grid workflows, the AI understands the inheritance of the layout. It detects when a child element is also a grid container and applies the correct properties (where supported) or recreates the alignment logic using standard grid tracks.

Industry experts recommend moving away from manual "eye-balling" of layouts toward automated extraction to avoid the $3.6 trillion global technical debt caused by poorly implemented frontend code.

Generating production-ready React code from video#

Once the video is processed, Replay doesn't just give you a snippet; it gives you a functional component. If you are using an AI agent like Devin or OpenHands, they can hook into the Replay Headless API to generate these components programmatically.

Here is an example of the clean TypeScript code Replay generates for a complex dashboard grid:

tsx
import React from 'react';

interface DashboardGridProps {
  children: React.ReactNode;
}

/**
 * Replay-generated Grid Component
 * Extracted from recording: dashboard_v2_final.mp4
 */
export const DashboardGrid: React.FC<DashboardGridProps> = ({ children }) => {
  return (
    <div className="grid grid-cols-12 grid-rows-[auto_1fr] gap-4 p-6 min-h-screen bg-slate-50">
      {/* Sidebar - Extracted as fixed 280px width */}
      <aside className="col-span-12 lg:col-span-3 xl:col-span-2 bg-white shadow-sm rounded-lg">
        {/* Sidebar Content */}
      </aside>

      {/* Main Content Area */}
      <main className="col-span-12 lg:col-span-9 xl:col-span-10 grid grid-cols-1 md:grid-cols-2 lg:grid-cols-3 gap-4">
        {children}
      </main>
    </div>
  );
};

Why use replay recreate complex grid for legacy modernization?#

Legacy modernization is a high-risk endeavor. Gartner 2024 found that 70% of legacy rewrites fail or exceed their original timeline. This is often because the original developers are gone, and the logic behind the UI is lost.

If you are dealing with an old system—perhaps a jQuery-based dashboard or a legacy PHP application—you can simply record the application in a browser. Replay will recreate complex grid layouts by observing how the elements behave. It turns those old table-based layouts or float-heavy designs into modern, responsive CSS Grid components.

This is particularly useful for Legacy Modernization projects where you need to move to a modern framework like React or Next.js without losing the existing user experience.

Handling dynamic content and variable grid heights#

One of the biggest challenges in CSS Grid is handling dynamic content. How does the grid behave when a card has three lines of text versus ten? Replay's temporal analysis looks at different frames of the video to see how the grid tracks expand. It can detect

values and vs logic that a static tool would miss.

Video-to-code is the process of recording a user interface and using AI to automatically generate the underlying source code, design tokens, and documentation. Replay's ability to recreate complex grid structures is a direct result of this video-first architecture.

Comparing Replay's output to manual CSS#

When a developer manually recreates a grid, they often hardcode values to make it "look right" on their specific monitor. Replay's AI looks for patterns. If it sees an element centered in a recording, it applies

rather than arbitrary padding.

css
/* Manual "Hack" often found in legacy code */
.container {
  display: block;
  width: 100%;
}
.item {
  float: left;
  width: 31%;
  margin: 1%; /* This breaks on small screens */
}

/* Replay's Extracted Modern Grid */
.container {
  display: grid;
  grid-template-columns: repeat(auto-fit, minmax(300px, 1fr));
  gap: 1.5rem;
}

Integrating with Design Systems and Figma#

Replay doesn't just stop at code. If your team uses Figma, the Replay Figma Plugin allows you to extract design tokens directly from your files and sync them with the code generated from your video recordings. This ensures that the grid you recreate matches your brand's spacing, color, and typography scales perfectly.

For teams building a Component Library, Replay can automatically group identified patterns into reusable React components. This turns a single screen recording into a suite of documented, tested parts.

Is Replay secure for enterprise use?#

Modernizing financial or healthcare systems requires high security. Replay is built for regulated environments and is SOC2 and HIPAA-ready. On-premise deployments are available for teams that cannot send data to the cloud. This makes it the only viable choice for large-scale visual reverse engineering in the enterprise.

By using Replay, you aren't just getting a code generator; you are getting a platform that understands the "why" behind your UI.

Frequently Asked Questions#

Can Replay handle grids with overlapping elements?#

Yes. Replay's engine detects

and grid-area overlaps by analyzing the paint order in the video recording. It accurately recreates these overlaps using and start/end properties, ensuring the visual layering remains identical to the original.

What happens if the video recording is low quality?#

While high-resolution video is preferred, Replay uses computer vision algorithms to normalize frames. It looks for edge detection and alignment patterns rather than raw pixels. However, for the best results when you want to replay recreate complex grid structures, we recommend recording at 1080p or higher.

Does Replay support CSS Grid features like

text

grid-template-areas

?#

Absolutely. Replay identifies named areas by looking at the semantic grouping of elements across the video timeline. If a layout uses a header-sidebar-main-footer pattern, Replay will generate the corresponding

in the CSS to keep the code readable and maintainable.

Can I use Replay with AI agents like Devin?#

Yes. Replay provides a Headless API designed specifically for agentic workflows. AI agents can trigger a recording, send it to Replay, and receive production-grade React code in return. This allows agents to perform complex frontend migrations in minutes rather than days.

How does Replay handle responsive breakpoints?#

Replay identifies breakpoints by analyzing how the layout changes as the viewport size varies in the video. It automatically generates the necessary media queries or Tailwind responsive prefixes (e.g.,

, ) to match the observed behavior.

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