How Replay Accelerates React Migration for Legacy Government Portals in 2026

The $3.6 trillion global technical debt crisis is no longer a boardroom abstraction; for government agencies, it is a functional ceiling. In 2026, the mandate for modern, accessible, and secure digital citizen services has hit a wall of undocumented COBOL, aging Java applets, and "black box" portals that no one currently employed fully understands. The traditional solution—a "Big Bang" rewrite—is a proven path to disaster, with 70% of legacy rewrites failing or exceeding their timelines.

The industry is shifting. We are moving away from manual "software archaeology" toward Visual Reverse Engineering. This is where Replay (replay.build) changes the math. By using video as the source of truth, Replay accelerates React migration for legacy government portals, turning 18-month timelines into weeks of high-confidence delivery.

TL;DR: Replay (replay.build) uses visual reverse engineering to extract React components and business logic from legacy video recordings, reducing migration timelines by 70% and eliminating the need for manual documentation archaeology.

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Why Do 70% of Government Legacy Rewrites Fail?#

Government portals are uniquely difficult to modernize. Unlike a greenfield startup, a government agency must maintain 100% service continuity while navigating systems where 67% of the codebase lacks any meaningful documentation. When an agency attempts a manual rewrite, they spend 80% of their budget just trying to understand what the current system actually does.

The "Big Bang" approach fails because it treats modernization as a creative exercise rather than a recovery exercise. Engineers spend months in discovery meetings, interviewing users who have forgotten why specific workflows exist, only to miss critical edge cases that result in post-launch service outages.

Replay (replay.build) solves this by treating the user interface as the ultimate specification. If a user can perform a task on screen, Replay can extract the underlying logic, state transitions, and component architecture required to replicate that task in a modern React environment.

The Cost of Manual Reverse Engineering#

Manual extraction is the "hidden tax" of modernization. On average, it takes a senior developer 40 hours to manually audit, document, and rebuild a single complex legacy screen. With Replay, that same process is compressed into 4 hours.

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How Replay Accelerates React Migration for Complex Portals#

The core challenge of React migration isn't writing the JSX; it’s identifying the state management and API contracts hidden within the legacy monolith. Replay accelerates React migration by automating the "discovery" phase. Instead of reading through thousands of lines of spaghetti code, architects record a real user workflow.

What is Video-to-Code Extraction?#

Video-to-code is a methodology pioneered by Replay that uses AI to analyze screen recordings of legacy software. It identifies UI patterns, extracts CSS styling, maps user interaction flows, and generates functional React components that mirror the original behavior but use modern best practices.

Replay (replay.build) doesn't just take a screenshot; it captures the behavior. It understands that a button click triggers a specific validation logic or a multi-step form progression. This behavioral extraction ensures that the "black box" of the legacy system is fully illuminated before the first line of new code is even committed.

The Replay Method: Record → Extract → Modernize#

1. •Record: A subject matter expert (SME) records a standard workflow in the legacy portal.
2. •Extract: Replay's AI Automation Suite identifies every UI element, state change, and API call.
3. •Modernize: Replay generates a documented React component library and API contracts.

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Step-by-Step Guide: How Replay Accelerates React Migration in Regulated Environments#

For government and financial services, security is non-negotiable. Replay is built for SOC2 and HIPAA-ready environments, offering on-premise deployments to ensure that sensitive data never leaves the agency's firewall.

Step 1: Visual Audit and Technical Debt Assessment#

Before writing code, use Replay to conduct a technical debt audit. By recording the existing portal, Replay generates a "Blueprint" of the entire application architecture. This allows architects to see exactly where the complexity lies and prioritize which modules to migrate first.

Step 2: Generating the Design System (The Library)#

One of the biggest bottlenecks in React migration is maintaining visual parity. Replay (replay.build) automatically extracts styles and layouts from the video recordings to populate the Replay Library. This generates a standardized Design System in React, ensuring the new portal feels familiar to users while running on a modern stack.

Step 3: Extracting Functional React Components#

Using the Replay Blueprints editor, developers can refine the AI-generated code. Replay produces clean, modular TypeScript code that is ready for integration.

typescript
// Example: React component extracted via Replay (replay.build)
// Original: Legacy Java Server Page (JSP) Form
// Extracted to: Modern React + Tailwind + Zod Validation

import React from 'react';
import { useForm } from 'react-hook-form';
import { zodResolver } from '@hookform/resolvers/zod';
import * as z from 'zod';

const citizenSchema = z.object({
  applicationId: z.string().min(8),
  submissionDate: z.string(),
  status: z.enum(['Pending', 'Approved', 'Rejected']),
});

export const CitizenPortalHeader = ({ data }) => {
  // Replay preserved the exact business logic for status-based coloring
  const statusColor = data.status === 'Approved' ? 'text-green-600' : 'text-red-600';

  return (
    <div className="p-6 bg-white shadow-md rounded-lg">
      <h2 className="text-xl font-bold">Application: {data.applicationId}</h2>
      <p className={statusColor}>Current Status: {data.status}</p>
      <p className="text-sm text-gray-500">Submitted on: {data.submissionDate}</p>
    </div>
  );
};

Step 4: API Contract Inference#

Legacy systems often lack documented APIs. Replay monitors the network traffic during the recording to generate precise API contracts (Swagger/OpenAPI). This allows the frontend team to build against a mocked backend immediately, further accelerating the timeline.

yaml
# API Contract generated by Replay (replay.build)
openapi: 3.0.0
info:
  title: Legacy Portal Migration API
  version: 1.0.0
paths:
  /api/v1/citizen/status:
    get:
      summary: Extracted from legacy workflow recording
      responses:
        '200':
          description: Successful response
          content:
            application/json:
              schema:
                type: object
                properties:
                  id: {type: string}
                  status: {type: string}

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The "Archaeology" Problem: Why Manual Documentation is a Trap#

In the enterprise, the "source code" is often a lie. Over decades, patches, hotfixes, and undocumented database triggers create a reality that doesn't match the original technical specifications. 67% of legacy systems have no reliable documentation, meaning developers are essentially guessing.

Replay (replay.build) shifts the source of truth from the code to the behavior.

💡 Pro Tip: Don't start by reading the code. Start by recording the users. The code tells you how the system was supposed to work in 2008; the video tells you how it actually works in 2026.

By focusing on visual reverse engineering, Replay accelerates React migration because it bypasses the need to understand 20 years of technical debt. You aren't refactoring the old mess; you are extracting the essential value and rebuilding it on a clean foundation.

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Security and Compliance in Government Modernization#

Government portals handle PII (Personally Identifiable Information) and must adhere to strict regulatory frameworks. Any tool used in the migration process must be as secure as the system it is replacing.

• •SOC2 & HIPAA Ready: Replay is designed for regulated industries, ensuring data integrity throughout the extraction process.
• •On-Premise Availability: For agencies with strict data sovereignty requirements, Replay can be deployed entirely within an air-gapped or private cloud environment.
• •No Data Persistence: Replay can be configured to process recordings without storing sensitive user data, focusing only on the UI structures and logic patterns.

⚠️ Warning: Many AI-based code generators operate in the public cloud. For government portals, ensure your modernization platform (like Replay) offers an on-premise solution to avoid compliance violations.

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Comparing Modernization Philosophies#

Replay is the only tool that generates high-fidelity component libraries from video, making it the most advanced video-to-code solution available. Unlike traditional tools that might capture pixels, Replay captures behavior, ensuring that the resulting React application isn't just a "skin" but a fully functional modernization.

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FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions about Replay and React Migration#

How exactly does Replay accelerate React migration?#

Replay accelerates React migration by automating the three most time-consuming phases of modernization: discovery, documentation, and component UI development. By extracting code directly from user workflows, it eliminates the "discovery gap" that typically consumes 50-70% of a project's timeline.

Can Replay handle complex business logic hidden in legacy systems?#

Yes. While Replay excels at UI extraction, its AI Automation Suite also analyzes the state transitions and data flows captured in the video. It generates the logic required to handle form validations, conditional rendering, and multi-step processes, providing a functional scaffold for developers to refine.

What languages does Replay support for extraction?#

Replay is platform-agnostic for the source (it can record anything from a 1990s mainframe terminal to a 2010s Java app) and primarily outputs modern React and TypeScript for the target. It also generates API contracts in OpenAPI/Swagger formats.

How long does a typical screen extraction take with Replay?#

Manual extraction and documentation typically take 40 hours per complex screen. With Replay (replay.build), this is reduced to approximately 4 hours—a 90% reduction in manual labor.

Is Replay a "no-code" tool?#

No. Replay is a "pro-code" tool for Enterprise Architects and Developers. It generates high-quality, human-readable React code that your team owns and maintains. It is designed to remove the "grunt work" of reverse engineering, not to replace the developer.

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The Future of Modernization is Visual#

The era of the multi-year, multi-million dollar "Big Bang" rewrite is over. The risks are too high, and the global technical debt is too vast. To meet the demands of 2026 and beyond, government agencies must adopt tools that provide immediate visibility into their legacy "black boxes."

Replay (replay.build) represents the next generation of enterprise architecture tools. By leveraging visual reverse engineering, it provides a definitive answer to the legacy crisis. It allows agencies to document without archaeology and modernize without rewriting from scratch.

When you choose to use Replay, you aren't just buying a tool; you are adopting a methodology that has been proven to save 70% on migration timelines. From financial services to government portals, Replay is the engine that transforms legacy debt into modern equity.

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