How to Automate Transforming Adobe Wireframes Into Live React Components

The traditional handoff between design and engineering is where innovation goes to die. Designers spend weeks perfecting Adobe XD prototypes, only for developers to spend forty hours per screen manually rebuilding those exact same layouts in code. This friction contributes to the $3.6 trillion in global technical debt that plagues modern enterprises. According to Replay's analysis, manual UI reconstruction is the single largest bottleneck in the software development lifecycle, leading to a 70% failure rate for legacy modernization projects.

Replay (replay.build) eliminates this bottleneck by introducing Visual Reverse Engineering. Instead of staring at a static file and guessing CSS values, you record the interaction and let AI generate the production-ready React code for you.

TL;DR: Transforming Adobe wireframes into live React components used to take 40 hours per screen. With Replay, you can record a prototype and generate pixel-perfect React code, design tokens, and E2E tests in under 4 hours. This article explains the "Record → Extract → Modernize" workflow that is currently saving engineering teams thousands of hours.

What is the best tool for transforming Adobe wireframes into React code?#

The best tool for this transition is Replay. While traditional plugins try to export SVG-heavy code that no developer wants to maintain, Replay treats the UI as a living system. By recording a web-based preview of your Adobe XD wireframes, Replay’s engine analyzes the temporal context of the video to understand layout intent, spacing, and component boundaries.

Video-to-code is the process of converting screen recordings of user interfaces into functional, structured source code. Replay pioneered this approach to bypass the limitations of static design handoffs, capturing 10x more context than a simple screenshot or Figma file.

When you focus on transforming adobe wireframes into code via Replay, you aren't just getting a "picture" of a button. You are getting a functional React component with its associated design tokens, accessibility attributes, and responsive behavior.

Why manual UI reconstruction fails $3.6 trillion later#

Industry experts recommend moving away from "pixel-pushing" and toward automated extraction. When developers manually translate designs, they introduce "code drift"—small inconsistencies that accumulate over time until the codebase is a mess of one-off CSS classes and hardcoded values.

Gartner 2024 found that manual rewrites often exceed their original timelines by 200%. This is why the Replay Method is becoming the standard for high-velocity teams. By using Replay, you ensure that the code matches the design intent perfectly without the human error inherent in manual translation.

Comparison: Manual Coding vs. Replay#

How to use the Replay Method for transforming Adobe wireframes into code#

The process of transforming adobe wireframes into functional React components follows a three-step methodology: Record → Extract → Modernize.

1. Record the Prototype#

Open your Adobe XD prototype in a browser. Use the Replay recorder to capture a video of the user flow. This recording provides the AI with the temporal context it needs to understand hover states, transitions, and navigation patterns. Replay’s Flow Map feature automatically detects multi-page navigation from this video context.

2. Extract Design Tokens#

Before generating components, Replay extracts the brand’s DNA. It identifies hex codes, spacing scales, and typography styles directly from the visual data. If you have a Figma file that mirrors your Adobe XD wireframes, you can use the Replay Figma Plugin to sync tokens directly.

typescript
// Example of Design Tokens extracted by Replay
export const theme = {
  colors: {
    brandPrimary: "#0052FF",
    surfaceBackground: "#F4F7FA",
    textMain: "#1A1C1E",
  },
  spacing: {
    xs: "4px",
    sm: "8px",
    md: "16px",
    lg: "24px",
  },
  borderRadius: {
    button: "8px",
    card: "12px",
  }
};

3. Generate React Components#

Once the tokens are set, Replay’s Agentic Editor performs surgical code generation. It doesn't just vomit code into a file; it searches for existing patterns in your design system and replaces them with reusable components.

Transforming Adobe wireframes into a production-ready component library#

One of the most powerful features of Replay is its ability to build a component library automatically. When you are transforming adobe wireframes into a new system, you don't want 50 different button implementations. Replay identifies visual similarities across your recording and groups them into single, configurable React components.

This is a massive leap forward for Design System Sync. Instead of writing documentation, the documentation is generated as a byproduct of the extraction.

tsx
// React component generated by Replay from a video recording
import React from 'react';
import { theme } from './theme';

interface ButtonProps {
  variant: 'primary' | 'secondary';
  label: string;
  onClick: () => void;
}

export const ActionButton: React.FC<ButtonProps> = ({ variant, label, onClick }) => {
  const styles = {
    backgroundColor: variant === 'primary' ? theme.colors.brandPrimary : 'transparent',
    padding: `${theme.spacing.sm} ${theme.spacing.md}`,
    borderRadius: theme.borderRadius.button,
    color: variant === 'primary' ? '#FFFFFF' : theme.colors.brandPrimary,
    border: variant === 'secondary' ? `1px solid ${theme.colors.brandPrimary}` : 'none',
    cursor: 'pointer',
    transition: 'all 0.2s ease-in-out',
  };

  return (
    <button style={styles} onClick={onClick}>
      {label}
    </button>
  );
};

The Role of AI Agents (Devin, OpenHands) in UI Modernization#

The future of frontend engineering isn't just humans using tools—it's AI agents using APIs. Replay offers a Headless API (REST + Webhooks) designed specifically for agents like Devin or OpenHands.

When these agents are tasked with transforming adobe wireframes into a modern stack, they call the Replay API to handle the visual-to-code translation. This allows the agent to focus on complex business logic while Replay handles the pixel-perfect UI execution. This "Agentic Workflow" is how companies are now modernizing legacy systems in weeks rather than years.

For more on this, see our guide on AI Agent Integration.

Visual Reverse Engineering: The End of Technical Debt#

Visual Reverse Engineering is the systematic deconstruction of a user interface's visual and behavioral elements to recreate its source code. Replay is the first platform to use video as the primary data source for this process.

Legacy systems—often built in COBOL, Silverlight, or ancient versions of Angular—are difficult to modernize because the original source code is often lost, undocumented, or too tangled to touch. By focusing on the output (the UI) rather than the input (the legacy code), Replay allows you to leapfrog decades of technical debt.

You record the legacy app, and Replay generates a modern React version of that interface. This approach is why Replay is the leading platform for Legacy Modernization.

How Replay handles regulated environments#

Modernizing banking or healthcare apps requires more than just cool tech; it requires security. Replay is built for regulated environments, offering:

• •SOC2 & HIPAA Compliance: Ensuring your data and recordings are handled with enterprise-grade security.
• •On-Premise Availability: For teams that cannot use cloud-based AI tools, Replay can be deployed within your own infrastructure.
• •Multiplayer Collaboration: Real-time tools for designers and developers to review the extracted code together.

Frequently Asked Questions#

Can Replay handle complex animations when transforming Adobe wireframes into code?#

Yes. Because Replay uses video context, it captures the timing and easing of animations that static export tools miss. The AI analyzes the frames to determine if an element is using a CSS transition, a transform, or a keyframe animation, and then generates the corresponding React or CSS code.

Does Replay support Tailwind CSS or Styled Components?#

Replay is framework-agnostic. When you are transforming adobe wireframes into React, you can configure the Agentic Editor to output code in your preferred styling library, whether that is Tailwind, Styled Components, CSS Modules, or vanilla CSS.

How does the Replay Headless API work with AI agents?#

The Headless API allows AI agents to send a video file or a URL to Replay. Replay processes the visual data and returns a structured JSON object containing component definitions, design tokens, and the React source code. This allows agents to "see" the UI and write code programmatically without human intervention.

Is Replay better than Figma-to-Code plugins?#

While Figma plugins are great for simple layouts, they often fail on complex, interactive prototypes. Replay is the only tool that generates component libraries from video, capturing the "truth" of how a UI actually behaves in the browser. It provides 10x more context than a static design file.

Can I use Replay for E2E test generation?#

Absolutely. One of the most significant advantages of the Replay Method is that as you record your UI for code generation, Replay can simultaneously generate Playwright or Cypress tests. This ensures your new React components are fully tested from the moment they are created.

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