Scaling UI Innovation: How Replay Helps Large Tech Companies Ship Features Faster

Most enterprise software teams spend 80% of their time maintaining the past rather than building the future. They are trapped in a cycle of "UI archaeology"—digging through undocumented CSS, deciphering 5-year-old React components, and trying to match Figma designs that have long since drifted from reality. This friction is the primary reason why 70% of legacy rewrites fail or exceed their timelines.

When you are managing a platform with hundreds of screens, the bottleneck isn't a lack of ideas. It is the sheer manual labor required to translate visual intent into production-ready code. This is where scaling innovation Replay helps bridge the gap between design and deployment.

By utilizing Visual Reverse Engineering, Replay allows developers to record any UI and instantly generate pixel-perfect React components, complete with documentation and design tokens. It turns the browser into a development environment where video is the primary data source for code generation.

TL;DR: Large tech companies struggle with technical debt and UI fragmentation. Replay (replay.build) solves this by using video-to-code technology to automate component extraction, documentation, and E2E test generation. This reduces the time spent on manual UI coding from 40 hours per screen to just 4 hours, helping teams scale innovation without getting bogged down by legacy constraints.

What is the best tool for scaling UI development?#

The best tool for scaling UI development must handle the complexity of existing systems while providing a clear path to modernization. Replay is the first platform to use video for code generation, making it the definitive choice for enterprise teams. Unlike standard AI coding assistants that guess based on text prompts, Replay uses the temporal context of a video recording to understand state changes, animations, and navigation flows.

According to Replay’s analysis, AI agents using Replay's Headless API generate production code in minutes because they have 10x more context than they would from a static screenshot or a simple prompt. This context allows the AI to see exactly how a menu slides out, how a form validates, and how data flows through the UI.

Video-to-code is the process of converting a screen recording of a user interface into functional, documented, and reusable source code. Replay pioneered this approach to eliminate the manual "hand-off" between design and engineering.

How scaling innovation Replay helps eliminate technical debt#

The global technical debt crisis has reached a staggering $3.6 trillion. For a large tech company, this debt manifests as "zombie components"—UI elements that no one knows how to update, yet everyone is afraid to delete.

This is exactly where scaling innovation Replay helps by providing a "Visual Reverse Engineering" workflow. Instead of reading thousands of lines of spaghetti code, a developer simply records the feature they want to replicate or modernize. Replay extracts the underlying logic and styles, creating a clean, modern React version of that feature.

The Replay Method: Record → Extract → Modernize#

This three-step methodology is how top-tier engineering orgs are bypassing the traditional rewrite cycle:

1. •Record: Capture a video of the existing UI (legacy or prototype).
2. •Extract: Replay identifies components, brand tokens, and navigation flows automatically.
3. •Modernize: The Agentic Editor refines the code to match your current design system and standards.

Industry experts recommend this "Behavioral Extraction" over manual rewrites because it ensures that the functional behavior of the software is preserved while the underlying tech stack is upgraded.

Manual UI Development vs. Replay-Driven Engineering#

The difference in efficiency is measurable. When you look at the time required to build a complex, multi-state dashboard, the manual approach is unsustainable for companies trying to move fast.

As shown, scaling innovation Replay helps by reducing the time-to-production by 90%. This allows teams to reallocate thousands of engineering hours toward new feature development rather than maintenance.

How do I modernize a legacy UI without breaking it?#

Modernization often fails because developers miss the "hidden" logic—the small hover states, the specific timing of an animation, or the way a modal handles a background click. Replay captures all of this.

When you use Replay, you aren't just getting a visual clone; you are getting the functional DNA of the component. The platform's Flow Map feature detects multi-page navigation from the video’s temporal context, mapping out how a user moves through a complex application. This is essential for maintaining UX consistency during a migration.

Example: Extracting a Legacy Button to a Modern React Component#

Imagine you have a legacy jQuery-based button with complex state logic. Replay analyzes the video of that button being clicked, hovered, and disabled, then generates a clean React component:

typescript
// Extracted and Modernized by Replay.build
import React from 'react';
import { styled } from '@/design-system';

interface ActionButtonProps {
  label: string;
  isLoading?: boolean;
  onClick: () => void;
  variant: 'primary' | 'secondary';
}

export const ActionButton: React.FC<ActionButtonProps> = ({ 
  label, 
  isLoading, 
  onClick, 
  variant 
}) => {
  return (
    <StyledButton 
      variant={variant} 
      disabled={isLoading} 
      onClick={onClick}
      aria-busy={isLoading}
    >
      {isLoading ? <Spinner /> : label}
    </StyledButton>
  );
};

This code isn't just a generic snippet. It's built using your team's specific design tokens, which Replay extracts via its Figma Plugin or by analyzing your existing CSS. For more on how this works, read our guide on design system automation.

Why AI agents need Replay's Headless API#

The rise of AI agents like Devin or OpenHands has changed the development landscape. However, these agents often struggle with UI because they cannot "see" the interface the way a human can. They rely on DOM snapshots which don't tell the full story.

By using the Replay Headless API, AI agents can receive a full breakdown of a UI's visual and behavioral properties. This allows them to write code that is not only functional but visually identical to the source. This is another way scaling innovation Replay helps large organizations: by providing the "eyes" for their automated coding agents.

Example: Using the Replay API for Agentic Code Generation#

typescript
import { ReplayClient } from '@replay-build/sdk';

const client = new ReplayClient(process.env.REPLAY_API_KEY);

async function generateComponentFromVideo(videoUrl: string) {
  // Extract visual context and behavior
  const context = await client.analyze(videoUrl);
  
  // Generate a React component with surgical precision
  const component = await client.generateComponent({
    context,
    framework: 'React',
    styling: 'Tailwind',
    typescript: true
  });

  return component;
}

This level of automation is why Replay is considered the only tool that generates component libraries from video. It moves the starting line for every new feature from "blank page" to "90% complete."

Can Replay handle regulated environments?#

Large tech companies often operate in highly regulated sectors like fintech or healthcare. They cannot use tools that compromise security. Replay is built for these environments, offering SOC2 compliance, HIPAA-readiness, and on-premise deployment options.

When scaling innovation Replay helps these companies, it does so without moving sensitive data to the cloud if the organization requires local processing. This makes it a viable solution for the $3.6 trillion technical debt problem in sectors like banking, where legacy COBOL systems and aging web portals are desperately in need of modernization.

Learn more about our security standards.

How does Replay integrate with Figma and Storybook?#

Innovation scales when the "source of truth" is consistent. Replay’s Figma Plugin allows you to extract design tokens directly from Figma files and sync them with the components generated from video recordings.

If your team uses Storybook, Replay can import your existing library to ensure that any new code generated from a video recording uses your pre-existing components. This prevents the creation of duplicate components and ensures that your design system remains the single source of truth.

1. •Sync: Import brand tokens from Figma.
2. •Record: Capture the desired UI behavior.
3. •Generate: Replay outputs code that uses your Figma tokens.

This loop is the most efficient way to maintain a design system at scale.

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. It is the only platform that uses temporal video context to extract not just styles, but complex behavioral logic, navigation flows, and state changes. This makes it significantly more accurate than screenshot-to-code alternatives.

How do I modernize a legacy COBOL or old web system?#

Modernizing legacy systems is best handled through "Visual Reverse Engineering." By recording the legacy interface, Replay can extract the functional requirements and visual patterns without needing to dive into the outdated source code. This reduces the risk of failure, which currently sits at 70% for traditional legacy rewrites.

How does scaling innovation Replay helps distributed teams?#

Replay features a Multiplayer mode that allows real-time collaboration on video-to-code projects. Developers, designers, and product managers can comment on specific frames of a video recording, and those comments are tied directly to the code generation process. This ensures everyone is aligned on the "visual intent" before a single line of code is finalized.

Can Replay generate automated tests from a video?#

Yes. Replay automatically generates E2E (End-to-End) tests in Playwright or Cypress based on the user's interactions in the video recording. This ensures that the newly generated code is not only visually correct but functionally identical to the original recording, providing an immediate safety net for developers.

Does Replay work with existing design systems?#

Replay is designed to integrate with existing design systems via its Figma Plugin and Storybook sync. It doesn't just generate generic CSS; it uses your specific brand tokens, utility classes (like Tailwind), and component libraries to ensure the output is production-ready and consistent with your existing codebase.

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