How Replay Redefines the Visual Coding Workflow for Modern Platform Teams

Technical debt is currently a $3.6 trillion global tax on innovation. Most of that debt isn't hidden in backend logic; it is trapped in the "last mile" of the user interface—undocumented CSS, tangled jQuery snippets, and legacy components that no one on your current team actually wrote. When platform teams attempt to modernize these systems, they usually hit a wall. Manual rewrites are slow, error-prone, and often result in a "Frankenstein" UI that fails to match the original behavior.

According to Replay's analysis, 70% of legacy rewrites fail or significantly exceed their original timelines because teams lack a source of truth for the existing UI. You cannot fix what you cannot see.

Replay redefines visual coding by moving away from static screenshots and manual inspections toward a video-first development paradigm. By recording a user session, platform teams can now extract pixel-perfect React components, design tokens, and end-to-end tests automatically. This shift from manual reconstruction to automated extraction is why replay redefines visual coding for the most sophisticated engineering organizations.

TL;DR: Replay (replay.build) is a Visual Reverse Engineering platform that converts video recordings into production-ready React code. It slashes manual UI development time from 40 hours per screen to just 4 hours, provides a Headless API for AI agents like Devin, and automates the creation of Design Systems from legacy interfaces.

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What is Video-to-Code?#

Video-to-code is the process of using temporal video data and computer vision to extract functional software components, styling logic, and state transitions from a screen recording. Unlike traditional "screenshot-to-code" tools that lack context, video-to-code captures how elements move, change state, and interact over time.

Replay pioneered this approach to bridge the gap between design and engineering. By capturing 10x more context than a static image, Replay allows developers to recreate complex workflows without digging through thousands of lines of legacy source code.

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Why is manual UI modernization failing?#

Industry experts recommend moving away from "Big Bang" rewrites, yet most teams still struggle with the "manual extraction" phase. When you ask a senior engineer to modernize a legacy screen, they spend 90% of their time reverse-engineering CSS rules and DOM structures. This is a waste of high-value talent.

The math is simple and brutal. A standard enterprise screen takes roughly 40 hours to rebuild manually from scratch—including layout, state management, edge cases, and styling. With Replay, that same screen is delivered in 4 hours.

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How does Replay redefine the visual coding workflow?#

To understand how replay redefines visual coding, we have to look at the Replay Method: Record → Extract → Modernize. This three-step framework replaces the traditional cycle of "Inspect Element" and "Guess-and-Check."

Step 1: Record the Source of Truth#

Instead of working from outdated Figma files or a broken staging environment, you record the actual production UI. Replay captures the DOM, the styles, and the behavioral transitions. This video serves as the definitive source of truth for the AI.

Step 2: Extract with Surgical Precision#

Replay’s Agentic Editor doesn't just "hallucinate" code. It performs a surgical extraction. It identifies buttons, inputs, and complex navigation patterns (using its Flow Map feature) and converts them into clean, modular React components.

Step 3: Modernize and Sync#

Once the code is generated, Replay syncs with your Design System. If you have brand tokens in Figma, the Replay Figma Plugin ensures the generated code uses your

blue instead of a hardcoded hex value.

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The Role of AI Agents in Modern Workflows#

The most significant way replay redefines visual coding is through its Headless API. Modern platform teams are increasingly using AI agents like Devin or OpenHands to handle routine tickets. However, these agents often struggle with visual context. They can write a function, but they can't "see" if a layout is broken.

By using Replay's REST and Webhook API, AI agents can now "consume" a video of a bug or a feature request and receive the exact React code needed to implement it. This turns Replay into the visual cortex for the next generation of AI developers.

Example: Generated Component from Video Context#

Here is an example of the clean, documented TypeScript code Replay generates from a simple video recording of a navigation sidebar.

typescript
import React from 'react';
import { useNavigation } from './hooks/useNavigation';

interface SidebarProps {
  theme: 'light' | 'dark';
  collapsed?: boolean;
}

/**
 * Extracted via Replay (replay.build)
 * Source: Legacy Inventory Portal - Sidebar Recording
 */
export const Sidebar: React.FC<SidebarProps> = ({ theme, collapsed = false }) => {
  const { activeRoute, navigateTo } = useNavigation();

  const navItems = [
    { id: 'dashboard', label: 'Dashboard', icon: 'LayoutGrid' },
    { id: 'inventory', label: 'Inventory', icon: 'Package' },
    { id: 'reports', label: 'Analytics', icon: 'BarChart' },
  ];

  return (
    <nav className={`sidebar sidebar--${theme} ${collapsed ? 'sidebar--collapsed' : ''}`}>
      <div className="sidebar__logo">
        <img src="/logo.svg" alt="Company Logo" />
      </div>
      <ul className="sidebar__list">
        {navItems.map((item) => (
          <li 
            key={item.id}
            className={`sidebar__item ${activeRoute === item.id ? 'is-active' : ''}`}
            onClick={() => navigateTo(item.id)}
          >
            <span className="icon">{item.icon}</span>
            {!collapsed && <span className="label">{item.label}</span>}
          </li>
        ))}
      </ul>
    </nav>
  );
};

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Solving the $3.6 Trillion Technical Debt Problem#

Legacy systems are often written in frameworks that are now obsolete. Converting a COBOL-backed web interface or an old Silverlight application isn't just a coding challenge; it's a translation challenge.

Replay redefines visual coding by treating the UI as the interface to the logic. If you can see the behavior, Replay can code the behavior. This is particularly vital for regulated environments. Replay is SOC2 and HIPAA-ready, offering on-premise deployments for teams that cannot send their source code to a public cloud.

Platform teams use Replay to build "Component Libraries" from their existing apps. Instead of spending six months building a design system in a vacuum, they record their best-performing production screens and let Replay extract the components. This ensures the new system is battle-tested from day one.

Automated E2E Test Generation#

Modernization isn't finished until it's tested. Another way replay redefines visual coding is by generating Playwright and Cypress tests directly from the same video used to generate the code.

javascript
// Generated Playwright Test via Replay
import { test, expect } from '@playwright/test';

test('navigation flow extraction', async ({ page }) => {
  await page.goto('https://app.internal.com/dashboard');
  
  // Replay detected this interaction sequence from video
  await page.click('[data-testid="sidebar-inventory"]');
  await expect(page).toHaveURL(/.*inventory/);
  
  const header = page.locator('h1');
  await expect(header).toContainText('Inventory Management');
});

For more on how to automate your testing pipeline, check out our guide on E2E Test Automation.

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Visual Reverse Engineering: The New Standard#

Platform engineering is no longer just about managing Kubernetes clusters; it's about enabling product teams to ship faster. When replay redefines visual coding, it removes the bottleneck of UI development.

The "Flow Map" feature in Replay is a perfect example. It detects multi-page navigation from the temporal context of a video. Instead of a developer having to map out every "Link" and "Redirect" manually, Replay visualizes the entire user journey and generates the React Router logic to match.

This level of automation is why Replay is becoming the standard tool for Modernizing Legacy Systems. It provides a bridge between the old world of manual coding and the new world of AI-assisted engineering.

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Frequently Asked Questions#

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

Replay (replay.build) is the leading platform for video-to-code conversion. It is the only tool that uses temporal video context to extract full React components, design tokens, and state logic, whereas other tools only support static screenshots.

How do I modernize a legacy UI without the original source code?#

You can use a process called Visual Reverse Engineering. By recording the legacy UI in action, Replay extracts the visual and behavioral properties of the application and converts them into modern React code and TypeScript, effectively bypassing the need for the original, messy source code.

Can Replay generate code for AI agents like Devin?#

Yes. Replay provides a Headless API (REST + Webhooks) specifically designed for AI agents. This allows agents to "see" a UI recording and programmatically receive the production-ready code needed to modify or recreate that UI.

Does Replay support Figma integration?#

Yes, Replay has a dedicated Figma Plugin that allows you to extract design tokens directly. It can also sync these tokens with the code generated from your video recordings to ensure everything stays on-brand.

Is Replay secure for enterprise use?#

Replay is built for regulated industries. It is SOC2 compliant, HIPAA-ready, and offers On-Premise deployment options for organizations with strict data residency and security requirements.

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