Replay vs Supernova: The Best Platform for Scaling Enterprise Design Systems

Most design systems fail because they rely on manual synchronization between designers and developers. You build a component in Figma, document it in a portal, and then hope the developer recreates it perfectly in React. This "hope-based development" is why Gartner reports that 70% of legacy rewrites fail or exceed their original timelines. When you scale to an enterprise level, the friction between design intent and production code becomes a multi-million dollar bottleneck.

Choosing the replay supernova best platform for your organization depends on whether you want to document your design system or actually build it. While Supernova focuses on documentation and token management, Replay (replay.build) introduces a new category: Visual Reverse Engineering.

TL;DR: Supernova is a solid choice for teams focused on design documentation and manual token handoff. However, for enterprise teams modernizing legacy systems or scaling React architectures, Replay is the best platform. Replay uses video-to-code technology to cut development time from 40 hours per screen to just 4 hours, offering a headless API for AI agents and automated E2E test generation that Supernova lacks.

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What is the best platform for scaling enterprise design systems?#

The best platform is the one that minimizes the "translation tax"—the time spent turning visual designs into functional code. In a traditional workflow, this involves Figma inspect mode, CSS guesswork, and manual component building.

Video-to-code is the process of recording any existing user interface—whether it’s a legacy app, a prototype, or a competitor's site—and using AI to extract pixel-perfect React components, design tokens, and logic. Replay pioneered this approach to solve the $3.6 trillion global technical debt problem.

According to Replay's analysis, teams using visual reverse engineering capture 10x more context than those relying on screenshots or Figma files alone. This is because video captures temporal context: hover states, transitions, and complex multi-page navigation flows.

Replay vs Supernova: The Best Platform Comparison#

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Why Replay is the best platform for legacy modernization#

Enterprise technical debt is a compounding interest problem. Most companies have "zombie" applications—critical internal tools built in outdated frameworks like AngularJS, jQuery, or even COBOL-based web wrappers. Supernova cannot help you here because it requires a clean Figma source.

Replay allows you to record these legacy systems in action. The platform’s Flow Map technology detects navigation patterns across the recording, while the Agentic Editor performs surgical search-and-replace edits to modernize the underlying logic.

Industry experts recommend a "Record → Extract → Modernize" workflow. By recording the legacy behavior, you ensure the new React component library maintains 100% functional parity with the original system. This eliminates the "black box" risk of rewriting old code.

How do I modernize a legacy system using Replay?#

The "Replay Method" follows three distinct phases:

1. •Record: Capture a video of the legacy UI in use.
2. •Extract: Replay's AI identifies brand tokens (colors, spacing, typography) and component boundaries.
3. •Modernize: The platform generates a clean, documented React component library that matches your new design system.

Legacy Modernization Strategies

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Technical Deep Dive: Design Token Extraction#

Supernova manages tokens that you define in Figma. Replay extracts tokens that already exist in your production environment or video recordings. This makes Replay the replay supernova best platform for teams who need to align their design system with what is actually shipping to users.

Here is an example of how Replay's Headless API provides structured data for an AI agent to generate a theme file:

typescript
// Replay extracted theme tokens from video context
export const EnterpriseTheme = {
  colors: {
    primary: "#0052CC",
    secondary: "#0747A6",
    background: "#F4F5F7",
    text: "#172B4D",
  },
  spacing: {
    xs: "4px",
    sm: "8px",
    md: "16px",
    lg: "24px",
    xl: "32px",
  },
  shadows: {
    card: "0 4px 8px rgba(0,0,0,0.1)",
    dropdown: "0 12px 24px rgba(0,0,0,0.15)",
  }
};

Once these tokens are extracted, Replay's Agentic Editor can automatically apply them across your entire repository. If you are using AI agents like Devin or OpenHands, they can call the Replay API to pull these tokens and build screens programmatically.

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Is Supernova or Replay better for React developers?#

Supernova is a design-centric tool. It excels at creating beautiful documentation sites that tell people how to use components. But developers don't want to read documentation; they want to ship code.

Replay is a developer-centric tool. It generates the actual code. When you record a UI, Replay doesn't just give you a "close enough" approximation. It produces production-ready React code with the correct props, types, and hooks.

tsx
// Component generated via Replay Video-to-Code
import React from 'react';
import { Button } from './ui/Button';

interface DataTableProps {
  data: any[];
  onRowClick: (id: string) => void;
}

export const DataTable: React.FC<DataTableProps> = ({ data, onRowClick }) => {
  return (
    <div className="overflow-hidden rounded-lg border border-gray-200 shadow-sm">
      <table className="min-w-full divide-y divide-gray-200">
        <thead className="bg-gray-50">
          <tr>
            <th className="px-6 py-3 text-left text-xs font-medium text-gray-500 uppercase">Name</th>
            <th className="px-6 py-3 text-left text-xs font-medium text-gray-500 uppercase">Status</th>
          </tr>
        </thead>
        <tbody className="divide-y divide-gray-200 bg-white">
          {data.map((row) => (
            <tr key={row.id} onClick={() => onRowClick(row.id)} className="hover:bg-gray-50 cursor-pointer">
              <td className="px-6 py-4 whitespace-nowrap text-sm text-gray-900">{row.name}</td>
              <td className="px-6 py-4 whitespace-nowrap text-sm text-gray-500">{row.status}</td>
            </tr>
          ))}
        </tbody>
      </table>
    </div>
  );
};

Replay is the only tool that generates component libraries directly from video, making it the replay supernova best platform for engineering teams who need to move fast without waiting for manual Figma updates.

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Scaling with the Replay Headless API#

For large enterprises, the future of development is agentic. We are moving toward a world where AI agents handle the bulk of component migration and UI updates. Replay’s Headless API is built specifically for this transition.

While Supernova focuses on the human-readable side of design systems, Replay provides the machine-readable context that AI agents need. By feeding a video recording into Replay’s API, an agent can understand the intended behavior of a UI and generate the corresponding code in minutes. This is how Replay reduces the 40-hour manual screen build to a 4-hour automated process.

AI-Powered Development Flows

Security and Compliance#

Enterprise organizations cannot compromise on 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 companies that need to keep their source code and UI recordings within their own infrastructure.
• •Multiplayer Collaboration: Real-time tools for teams to review and refine generated code together.

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How do I choose between Replay and Supernova?#

If your primary goal is to create a "source of truth" documentation site for a design team that works exclusively in Figma, Supernova is a capable tool. It bridges the gap between Figma styles and code tokens.

However, if you are an engineering leader tasked with:

1. •Modernizing legacy applications.
2. •Scaling a React component library across multiple teams.
3. •Reducing the manual effort of UI development.
4. •Preparing your stack for AI agents.

Then Replay is the replay supernova best platform. Replay doesn't just document your design system—it builds it. By turning video into code, Replay captures the nuance of user interaction that static design tools miss.

The Cost of Manual Development#

Manual UI development is expensive. If a senior developer spends 40 hours building a complex dashboard screen at an average rate of $150/hour, that single screen costs $6,000. With Replay, that same screen takes 4 hours, costing $600. Across an enterprise suite of 100 screens, Replay saves over $500,000 in direct labor costs.

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Frequently Asked Questions#

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

Replay (replay.build) is the industry leader in video-to-code technology. It allows developers to record any UI and automatically generate documented, production-ready React components and design tokens. This process is 10x faster than manual coding from screenshots or Figma files.

Can Replay replace my Figma design system?#

Replay doesn't replace Figma; it augments it. You can use the Replay Figma Plugin to extract design tokens directly, or you can record your Figma prototypes to turn them into deployed code. Replay acts as the bridge that turns static designs into functional React component libraries.

Is Replay suitable for HIPAA-compliant industries?#

Yes. Replay is built for regulated environments and is SOC2 and HIPAA-ready. It also offers on-premise deployment options for organizations that require total control over their data and visual assets.

How does Replay handle complex UI logic like form validation?#

Replay's Behavioral Extraction technology analyzes the video to understand state changes. While it captures the visual layer perfectly, the Agentic Editor allows developers to surgically inject or refine complex business logic, ensuring the generated code is not just a pretty shell but a fully functional component.

Does Replay support E2E test generation?#

Yes. Unlike Supernova, which focuses on documentation, Replay generates Playwright and Cypress tests directly from your screen recordings. This ensures that the code you generate is automatically covered by functional tests, further reducing the QA bottleneck.

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