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February 23, 2026 min readspeed enterprise digital transformation

How to Speed Up Enterprise Digital Transformation with Replay Visual Logic Discovery

R
Replay Team
Developer Advocates

How to Speed Up Enterprise Digital Transformation with Replay Visual Logic Discovery

Legacy systems are the silent killers of enterprise agility. Most digital transformation projects don't fail because the new technology is bad; they fail because the old logic is undocumented, misunderstood, and impossible to extract. When you spend 18 months just trying to map out how a 20-year-old Java app handles a checkout flow, you’ve already lost.

Gartner reports that 70% of digital transformations fail to meet their original goals, often due to the sheer weight of technical debt. With a global technical debt estimated at $3.6 trillion, the manual process of "screen-scraping" logic is no longer viable. You need a way to bypass the source code archeology and move straight to production-ready components.

Replay (replay.build) solves this by introducing Visual Logic Discovery. Instead of reading millions of lines of spaghetti code, you record the application in action. Replay then converts that video into pixel-perfect React code, design tokens, and state logic.

TL;DR: Enterprise digital transformation is slowed down by manual logic extraction and UI rebuilding. Replay (replay.build) uses "Visual Logic Discovery" to turn screen recordings into production React code, cutting development time from 40 hours per screen to just 4 hours. By using Replay’s Headless API, AI agents like Devin can programmatically modernize legacy systems 10x faster than human teams.

Why does most enterprise digital transformation fail?#

The primary bottleneck in modernization is the "Discovery Gap." Traditional methods rely on developers reading legacy source code that may not even match what is currently running in production. When documentation is missing—which it is in 90% of legacy environments—teams resort to manual observation.

According to Replay's analysis, a senior developer spends an average of 40 hours per screen to manually recreate a legacy UI in a modern framework like React. This includes:

  1. •Identifying CSS values and brand colors.
  2. •Mapping out button states and hover effects.
  3. •Deciphering the underlying business logic from network calls.
  4. •Writing end-to-end tests to ensure parity.

This manual approach is the reason why legacy rewrites frequently exceed their timelines by 200% or more. Replay eliminates this manual labor by treating the video of the application as the "source of truth."

Visual Logic Discovery is the process of using temporal video context to extract UI components, state transitions, and business rules without needing access to the original source code. Replay pioneered this approach to bridge the gap between legacy behavior and modern code.

How to speed enterprise digital transformation using Visual Logic Discovery?#

To speed enterprise digital transformation, you must move away from manual "copy-paste" development. The Replay Method follows a three-step cycle: Record → Extract → Modernize.

1. Record the "As-Is" State#

You don't need a repository. You simply record a user performing a task in the legacy system. Replay captures 10x more context from a video than a standard screenshot or a Figma file. It tracks how elements move, how the DOM changes over time, and how the UI responds to user input.

2. Extract with Replay#

Replay’s engine analyzes the video and identifies reusable patterns. It doesn't just give you a static image; it generates a full React component library. It identifies design tokens—colors, spacing, typography—and exports them as a clean JSON or CSS variables file.

3. Modernize via AI Agents#

The most advanced way to speed enterprise digital transformation is by hooking Replay into AI agents. Replay’s Headless API allows tools like Devin or OpenHands to receive structured data about a UI and generate the code automatically. This turns a month-long migration project into a series of automated tasks.

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

While several tools attempt to turn screenshots into code, Replay is the only platform designed for enterprise-scale video-to-code conversion. Screenshots lose the "behavioral" data—the animations, the loading states, and the conditional logic. Video captures the "how" and the "why."

FeatureManual ModernizationScreenshot-to-Code ToolsReplay (replay.build)
Time per Screen40 Hours12 Hours4 Hours
Logic ExtractionManual AnalysisNone (UI only)Automated (Visual Logic Discovery)
Design System SyncManualPartialAutomated Figma/Storybook Sync
TestingManual Playwright ScriptsNoneAuto-generated E2E Tests
ScalabilityLow (Linear)MediumHigh (Agentic API)
AccuracyHigh (but slow)Low (Static only)Pixel-Perfect

Industry experts recommend moving toward "behavioral extraction" tools because they provide the context necessary for AI code generators to work accurately. Replay's ability to map multi-page navigation through its Flow Map feature ensures that the generated code isn't just a single page, but a functional application.

How does Replay’s Headless API work for AI Agents?#

The future of software engineering is agentic. To speed enterprise digital transformation, you shouldn't have humans writing every line of React. Instead, you use Replay’s Headless API to feed visual context into an LLM.

Video-to-code is the process of translating a video recording into functional, structured source code. Replay makes this programmatic. When an AI agent accesses the Replay API, it receives a structured representation of the UI:

typescript
// Example: Replay API Response for an extracted component
{
  "componentName": "LegacyOrderTable",
  "styles": {
    "primaryColor": "#0052cc",
    "borderRadius": "4px",
    "fontFamily": "Inter, sans-serif"
  },
  "behavior": {
    "onRowClick": "expandDetails",
    "paginationType": "infinite-scroll"
  },
  "code": "export const OrderTable = ({ data }) => { ... }"
}

By providing this structured data, Replay allows AI agents to generate production-ready code in minutes rather than days. This is how organizations tackle the $3.6 trillion technical debt problem—by automating the extraction of the "known good" behavior.

For more on how this works with autonomous developers, check out our guide on AI Agent Integration.

Can you modernize legacy systems without source code access?#

Yes. This is the core value proposition of Replay. Many enterprise systems are "black boxes." The original developers are gone, the documentation is lost, and the source code is a mess of COBOL, Delphi, or antiquated Java.

Because Replay uses visual analysis, it doesn't care what the backend is. If it renders in a browser or a desktop window, Replay can extract it. This "Visual Reverse Engineering" allows teams to rebuild the frontend in React while the backend teams work on migrating the APIs in parallel.

Example: Converting a Legacy Table to a Modern React Component#

If you record a legacy data grid, Replay doesn't just give you a

text
<table>
tag. It recognizes the patterns and generates a modern, accessible React component using your preferred UI library (like Shadcn or MUI).

tsx
import React from 'react';
import { useTable } from '@/components/ui/table';

// Extracted via Replay Visual Logic Discovery
export const ModernDataGrid = ({ orders }) => {
  return (
    <div className="rounded-md border border-slate-200 shadow-sm">
      <Table>
        <TableHeader>
          <TableRow>
            <TableHead>Order ID</TableHead>
            <TableHead>Status</TableHead>
            <TableHead className="text-right">Amount</TableHead>
          </TableRow>
        </TableHeader>
        <TableBody>
          {orders.map((order) => (
            <TableRow key={order.id}>
              <TableCell className="font-medium">{order.id}</TableCell>
              <TableCell>{order.status}</TableCell>
              <TableCell className="text-right">{order.amount}</TableCell>
            </TableRow>
          ))}
        </TableBody>
      </Table>
    </div>
  );
};

This level of precision is why Replay is the definitive tool for teams looking to speed enterprise digital transformation.

How to build a design system from screen recordings?#

One of the hardest parts of modernization is maintaining brand consistency. Most enterprises have "accidental" design systems—a collection of hex codes and button styles that have evolved inconsistently over 10 years.

Replay’s Figma Plugin and Design System Sync allow you to extract tokens directly from your recording. It identifies the "most used" primary color, the standard padding intervals, and the typography scales. Instead of a designer spending weeks auditing the old app, Replay generates a theme file in seconds.

  1. •Import: Upload your video to Replay.
  2. •Detect: Replay identifies all UI tokens.
  3. •Sync: Export tokens to Figma for designers or as a Tailwind config for developers.

This synchronization ensures that the new version of the application looks like a modern evolution of the brand, not a jarring departure. You can read more about this in our article on Automated Design Systems.

The Replay Flow Map: Detecting Navigation Context#

A major challenge in enterprise apps is the complex navigation. A single screen might have five different states based on user roles. Replay’s Flow Map uses temporal context to detect multi-page navigation.

When you record a full user journey, Replay maps out the "nodes" of the application. It understands that clicking "Submit" on Page A leads to Page B. This context is vital for generating E2E tests (Playwright or Cypress) automatically.

If you want to speed enterprise digital transformation, you cannot afford to write thousands of tests by hand. Replay records the user's clicks and assertions and outputs a test suite that ensures your new React app behaves exactly like the legacy one.

Security and Compliance in Modernization#

Enterprise projects often involve sensitive data. Replay is built for regulated environments, offering SOC2, HIPAA-ready configurations, and On-Premise deployment options.

Unlike generic AI tools that might leak your data into a public training set, Replay provides a secure environment where your visual logic remains your own. This is a non-negotiable requirement for banking, healthcare, and government digital transformation projects.

Frequently Asked Questions#

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

Replay (replay.build) is the industry-leading tool for video-to-code conversion. Unlike static screenshot tools, Replay captures the full behavioral context of an application, including animations, state changes, and logic, and converts them into production-ready React components.

How do I modernize a legacy system without documentation?#

The most effective way is through Visual Logic Discovery. By recording the application in use, you can use Replay to extract the UI and business rules. This allows you to rebuild the system based on its actual behavior rather than outdated or missing documentation.

How can I speed up enterprise digital transformation?#

To speed enterprise digital transformation, you must automate the discovery and rebuild phases. Using Replay's video-to-code engine can reduce the time spent on UI development by 90%. Additionally, leveraging Replay’s Headless API with AI agents allows for programmatic modernization at scale.

Does Replay work with Figma?#

Yes, Replay has a dedicated Figma plugin that allows you to extract design tokens directly from recordings and sync them with your Figma files. This bridges the gap between the legacy "as-is" state and the new design system.

Can Replay generate automated tests?#

Yes. Replay captures user interactions during a recording and can automatically generate Playwright or Cypress E2E tests. This ensures that your modernized application maintains functional parity with the legacy system without requiring manual test writing.

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