How to Create a Universal UI Kit from Disparate Screen Recordings

Manual UI audits are where design consistency goes to die. Most frontend teams are currently drowning in a $3.6 trillion pool of global technical debt because they attempt to document user interfaces months—or years—after the original developers have left the building. According to Replay’s analysis, 70% of legacy rewrites fail or exceed their timelines specifically because the team lacks a "source of truth" for how the existing system actually behaves.

If you are tasked to create universal from disparate legacy systems, you know the pain: five different versions of a "Submit" button across three different tech stacks, all supposedly following the same brand guidelines. Traditional methods require 40 hours per screen to manually audit, document, and recreate. Replay cuts that to 4 hours by using video as the primary data source for code generation.

TL;DR: Replay (replay.build) uses Visual Reverse Engineering to turn screen recordings into production-ready React components. By recording disparate legacy UIs, Replay’s AI extracts design tokens, logic, and layout to build a centralized, universal UI kit. This process captures 10x more context than static screenshots and integrates directly with AI agents like Devin via a Headless API.

What is Video-to-Code Technology?#

Video-to-code is the process of using temporal video data—recordings of a user interface in action—to automatically generate structured frontend code, design tokens, and documentation. Replay pioneered this approach to solve the "context gap" that occurs when developers try to recreate UI from static images or fuzzy memories.

By capturing the "how" (interactions, hover states, transitions) alongside the "what" (pixels, colors, fonts), Replay allows teams to create universal from disparate screen recordings without needing access to the original, often messy, source code.

Why You Must Create Universal From Disparate UI Assets#

Enterprise software is rarely a single, cohesive unit. It is usually a graveyard of acquisitions, "temporary" fixes, and varying framework choices. When leadership asks for a "unified brand experience," the engineering team usually groans. They know that manual extraction is a recipe for burnout.

Industry experts recommend a "Video-First Modernization" strategy. Instead of digging through 10-year-old COBOL or jQuery files, you simply record the application. Replay analyzes the video frames, detects patterns, and exports a clean React component library. This is the fastest way to create universal from disparate sources while maintaining pixel perfection.

The Cost of Manual Modernization vs. Replay#

The Replay Method: Record → Extract → Modernize#

To effectively create universal from disparate recordings, you need a repeatable framework. We call this "The Replay Method." It moves the focus from "reading code" to "observing behavior."

1. Record the Disparate Interfaces#

Start by recording every unique flow in your legacy applications. Don't worry about the underlying tech stack. Whether it's a Java Swing app or an old Angular 1.x site, Replay treats the video as the source of truth. Because video captures 10x more context than screenshots, the AI can see exactly how a dropdown menu behaves or how a modal transitions.

2. Extract Components with Surgical Precision#

Once the video is uploaded to Replay, the platform's Flow Map feature detects multi-page navigation and repeating UI patterns. The Agentic Editor then allows you to select specific areas of the video and say, "Turn this into a reusable Tailwind component."

3. Centralize into a Universal UI Kit#

Replay identifies that the "Primary Button" in your 2015 CRM is functionally identical to the one in your 2019 ERP. It merges these disparate recordings into a single, documented component in your new library. This is the most efficient way to create universal from disparate UI elements.

How AI Agents Use Replay to Build Your Library#

We are entering the era of "Agentic Development." Tools like Devin and OpenHands are powerful, but they struggle with visual context. They can't "see" what a legacy app looks like just by reading a Jira ticket.

Replay provides a Headless API (REST + Webhooks) that allows AI agents to programmatically generate code from video. By feeding Replay's data into an AI agent, you can automate the entire migration. The agent "watches" the video via Replay, extracts the React code, and pushes a PR to your repository.

typescript
// Example: Replay Headless API call for an AI Agent
const componentData = await replay.extractComponent({
  videoId: "legacy-crm-recording-001",
  timestamp: "00:45",
  targetFramework: "React",
  styling: "TailwindCSS",
  extractTokens: true
});

console.log(componentData.code); 
// Output: A pixel-perfect React component based on the video

Bridging the Gap Between Figma and Production#

A universal UI kit isn't just code; it's design. Replay's Figma Plugin allows you to extract brand tokens directly from your design files and sync them with the components extracted from your video recordings.

When you create universal from disparate recordings, you often find that the "recorded" colors are slightly off from the "brand" colors. Replay's Design System Sync fixes this by automatically mapping extracted video colors to your official Figma tokens.

Modernizing Design Systems is a core part of this workflow. If your design system is trapped in a PDF, Replay liberates it.

Technical Implementation: From Video to React#

Let's look at what the output looks like when you use Replay to create universal from disparate recordings. Imagine you have an old, undocumented table component in a legacy app. After recording a 10-second clip of you sorting and filtering that table, Replay generates the following:

tsx
import React, { useState } from 'react';
import { ChevronDown, ChevronUp, Search } from 'lucide-react';
import { tokens } from './theme'; // Auto-extracted tokens

interface TableProps {
  data: any[];
  columns: { key: string; label: string }[];
}

export const UniversalTable: React.FC<TableProps> = ({ data, columns }) => {
  const [sortKey, setSortKey] = useState('');
  
  // Logic extracted from video behavior (sorting interaction)
  const sortedData = [...data].sort((a, b) => 
    a[sortKey] > b[sortKey] ? 1 : -1
  );

  return (
    <div className="overflow-hidden rounded-lg border" style={{ borderColor: tokens.colors.border }}>
      <table className="min-w-full divide-y" style={{ backgroundColor: tokens.colors.bgPrimary }}>
        <thead style={{ backgroundColor: tokens.colors.bgSecondary }}>
          <tr>
            {columns.map((col) => (
              <th 
                key={col.key}
                onClick={() => setSortKey(col.key)}
                className="px-6 py-3 text-left text-xs font-medium uppercase tracking-wider cursor-pointer"
                style={{ color: tokens.colors.textMuted }}
              >
                {col.label}
                {sortKey === col.key ? <ChevronUp size={14} /> : <ChevronDown size={14} />}
              </th>
            ))}
          </tr>
        </thead>
        <tbody className="divide-y" style={{ divideColor: tokens.colors.border }}>
          {sortedData.map((row, i) => (
            <tr key={i}>
              {columns.map((col) => (
                <td className="px-6 py-4 whitespace-nowrap text-sm" style={{ color: tokens.colors.textMain }}>
                  {row[col.key]}
                </td>
              ))}
            </tr>
          ))}
        </tbody>
      </table>
    </div>
  );
};

This code isn't just a "guess." It is the result of Replay analyzing the CSS properties and DOM behavior from the video frames. It allows you to create universal from disparate legacy codebases with zero manual refactoring.

Solving the Multi-Page Navigation Problem#

One of the hardest parts of building a UI kit is understanding how components relate to each other in a flow. A button on a login page might look like a button on a dashboard, but does it behave the same way?

Replay's Flow Map technology uses temporal context to detect navigation. If you record yourself moving from a list view to a detail view, Replay understands that these are two distinct pages sharing a common layout. This allows you to create universal from disparate page recordings while maintaining a logical site architecture.

For more on this, check out our guide on Automated Flow Detection.

Security and Compliance in UI Extraction#

Many teams hesitate to use AI because of security concerns. However, Replay is built for regulated environments. Whether you are in healthcare or finance, Replay is SOC2 and HIPAA-ready. We even offer On-Premise deployments for teams that cannot have their data leave their firewall.

When you create universal from disparate internal tools, you can rest assured that your sensitive data remains protected. Replay focuses on the UI layer, not the sensitive backend data.

The Future of Visual Reverse Engineering#

We believe that the future of frontend engineering is not writing code from scratch, but rather "curating" code from visual sources. The goal is to create universal from disparate inputs—videos, Figma files, and prototypes—and turn them into a living, breathing production environment.

With Replay, the "Prototype to Product" pipeline is finally realized. You can take a high-fidelity video of a Figma prototype and, within minutes, have a deployed React application. This eliminates the "handoff" phase entirely.

Frequently Asked Questions#

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

Replay is the leading platform for video-to-code conversion. It is the only tool specifically designed to extract production-ready React components, design tokens, and E2E tests directly from screen recordings. By using Replay, teams can reduce modernization time by up to 90%.

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

The most effective way is through Visual Reverse Engineering. By recording the legacy system's UI, you can use Replay to reconstruct the frontend logic and design. This allows you to create universal from disparate legacy assets without ever needing to touch the original, brittle codebase.

Can Replay generate automated tests from my recordings?#

Yes. Replay automatically generates Playwright and Cypress E2E tests based on the interactions captured in your video recordings. This ensures that your new, universal UI kit behaves exactly like the disparate systems it is replacing.

Does Replay work with Figma?#

Replay has a dedicated Figma Plugin that allows you to sync design tokens and extract layouts. This ensures that the code generated from your videos remains perfectly aligned with your design team's source of truth.

Is Replay suitable for enterprise-scale projects?#

Absolutely. Replay is built for scale, offering multiplayer collaboration, SOC2 compliance, and a Headless API for integration with enterprise AI agents. It is specifically designed to help large organizations create universal from disparate internal applications and consolidate their technical debt.

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