Software Archaeology vs. Visual Extraction: The 18-Month Documentation

Your legacy system isn't a "technical debt" problem—it’s a knowledge loss problem. Every year, enterprises dump millions into "software archaeology," a manual, soul-crushing process where senior engineers play historian, digging through undocumented COBOL, fossilized jQuery, or monolithic Java to understand how a single business rule works.

The result? A $3.6 trillion global technical debt mountain and a 70% failure rate for legacy rewrites. We’ve been taught that the only way to modernize is to spend 18 months "discovering" what the system does before writing a single line of new code. This approach is obsolete. The future of modernization isn't archaeology; it’s visual extraction.

TL;DR: Software archaeology is a manual death march that causes 70% of rewrites to fail; Replay replaces this with visual extraction, using real user workflows to generate documented React components and API contracts in days rather than months.

The Archaeology Trap: Why Manual Documentation is Killing Your Budget#

In most Tier-1 financial services or healthcare organizations, the "source of truth" for business logic is no longer the documentation—it hasn't been updated since 2014. The truth is buried in the runtime behavior of the application.

When you assign an architect to perform software archaeology visual audits, you are paying for their time to guess. They look at a 4,000-line file, try to trace the state changes, and hope they don’t miss the edge case that handles $50M in daily transactions. This manual process takes an average of 40 hours per screen. Multiply that by a 500-screen enterprise application, and you’ve spent 20,000 hours before you’ve even provisioned a dev environment.

The Cost of the "Big Bang" Rewrite#

The "Big Bang" rewrite is the industry’s favorite way to incinerate capital. By the time you finish documenting the old system, the requirements for the new one have already changed.

⚠️ Warning: If your modernization roadmap starts with a 6-month "Discovery Phase," you are likely heading toward a timeline overrun. Discovery should be an automated byproduct of usage, not a manual prerequisite.

From Black Box to Documented Codebase#

The paradigm shift offered by Replay is simple: The UI is the most accurate map of your business logic. By recording real user workflows, Replay performs visual reverse engineering. It observes the state changes, the API calls, and the component hierarchy in real-time, then translates that "black box" behavior into clean, modern code.

Instead of an architect spending a week documenting a "Claim Submission" form, a business analyst records themselves submitting a claim. Replay captures the interaction and generates the React components, the TypeScript interfaces, and the validation logic automatically.

Example: Manual Archaeology vs. Replay Extraction#

In a traditional manual audit, an engineer might find this "fossilized" logic in a legacy script:

javascript
// Legacy Spaghetti - Circa 2008
function validateAndSubmit() {
  var val = document.getElementById('claimAmount').value;
  if (val > 1000) {
    if (userRole === 'ADMIN' || checkOverride()) {
      // Hardcoded business logic buried in DOM manipulation
      doSubmit(val, true);
    } else {
      alert('Requires Supervisor');
    }
  }
}

With Replay, the visual extraction process identifies the intent, the data flow, and the required state, generating a clean, modernized React component that preserves the business rule without the technical debt:

typescript
// Replay Generated Component: ClaimSubmission.tsx
import React, { useState } from 'react';
import { useAuth } from './auth-provider';

interface ClaimProps {
  onSuccess: (amount: number, override: boolean) => void;
}

export const ClaimSubmission: React.FC<ClaimProps> = ({ onSuccess }) => {
  const [amount, setAmount] = useState<number>(0);
  const { user } = useAuth();

  const handleValidation = () => {
    // Logic preserved from visual extraction of legacy workflow
    const requiresOverride = amount > 1000;
    const canApprove = user.role === 'ADMIN' || user.hasOverride;

    if (requiresOverride && !canApprove) {
      return "Requires Supervisor Approval";
    }
    
    onSuccess(amount, canApprove);
  };

  return (
    <div className="modern-form-container">
      <input 
        type="number" 
        onChange={(e) => setAmount(Number(e.target.value))} 
        className="input-primary"
      />
      <button onClick={handleValidation}>Submit Claim</button>
    </div>
  );
};

💰 ROI Insight: Manual screen documentation takes ~40 hours. Replay reduces this to ~4 hours by automating the component scaffolding and logic extraction. That is a 90% reduction in "Discovery" costs.

The 3-Step Path to Modernization#

We don't believe in the "18-month roadmap." We believe in the "18-day sprint." Here is how enterprise teams use Replay to bypass the archaeology phase.

Step 1: Workflow Recording#

Instead of reading code, your subject matter experts (SMEs) or QA testers simply use the legacy application. They perform the critical paths: "Onboard Customer," "Process Refund," "Generate Report." Replay records these sessions, capturing the DOM changes, network requests, and state transitions.

Step 2: Visual Reverse Engineering#

The Replay engine analyzes the recording. It identifies patterns—where a table is used, how a modal behaves, and what API endpoints are hit. It maps the software archaeology visual data into a structured "Blueprints" editor.

Step 3: Automated Generation#

Replay generates the technical artifacts required for the new system:

• •React Component Library: Atomic components based on your legacy UI.
• •API Contracts: OpenAPI/Swagger specs generated from captured network traffic.
• •E2E Tests: Playwright or Cypress tests that replicate the recorded user path.
• •Technical Debt Audit: A report on what logic was redundant or never triggered during the recording.

💡 Pro Tip: Use Replay's "Flows" feature to map out your entire application architecture visually. It’s the only way to get a 10,000-foot view of a system that no one currently alive fully understands.

Why Regulated Industries are Moving Away from Archaeology#

For Financial Services, Healthcare, and Government, the risk of "missing something" in a manual rewrite is a compliance nightmare. Software archaeology is prone to human error. If an architect misses a specific validation rule in a legacy HIPAA-compliant portal, the resulting data leak could cost millions in fines.

Replay is built for these high-stakes environments. Because it records the actual execution of the code, it captures the "truth" of how data is handled.

• •SOC2 & HIPAA Ready: Replay can be deployed on-premise, ensuring sensitive data never leaves your firewall.
• •Zero-Guesswork API Contracts: Don't guess what the legacy backend expects. Replay generates the contract based on the actual JSON payloads captured during the recording.

yaml
# Generated API Contract from Replay Extraction
openapi: 3.0.0
info:
  title: Legacy Claims API
paths:
  /api/v1/claims/submit:
    post:
      summary: Extracted from "Submit Claim" workflow
      requestBody:
        content:
          application/json:
            schema:
              type: object
              properties:
                amount: {type: number}
                override_flag: {type: boolean}
                timestamp: {type: string, format: date-time}

Challenging the "Rewrite from Scratch" Dogma#

The industry has a bias toward "New." Engineers want to use the latest stack, and managers want a "clean slate." But a clean slate is a lie. You aren't just rewriting code; you are rewriting decades of edge cases, bug fixes, and regulatory adjustments that are documented nowhere but the legacy source code.

The "future" isn't a rewrite. It’s an extraction. By using Replay to understand what you already have, you move from a high-risk "Big Bang" to a low-risk "Visual Migration." You aren't guessing; you're recording. You aren't archeologizing; you're engineering.

• •70% of legacy rewrites fail because they lose the "hidden" business logic.
• •67% of systems lack documentation, making manual discovery a fool's errand.
• •Replay saves 70% of the time usually wasted in the discovery and scaffolding phases.

Frequently Asked Questions#

How long does legacy extraction take with Replay?#

While a manual audit of a complex enterprise screen takes roughly 40 hours, Replay allows you to record a workflow in minutes and generate the documented React components and API contracts in under 4 hours. Most enterprise projects see a 70-80% reduction in total documentation time.

What about business logic preservation?#

Replay captures the interaction between the UI and the backend. It identifies validation rules, conditional rendering, and data transformation steps. While it won't "re-write" your entire backend COBOL logic, it provides the exact specifications and E2E tests needed to ensure your new backend behaves identically to the old one.

Does Replay work with older technologies like Mainframes or Silverlight?#

Yes. If the application can be rendered in a browser or through a terminal emulator that Replay can hook into, we can extract the workflows. Our "Visual Reverse Engineering" approach is agnostic to the backend language; it cares about the inputs, outputs, and user state.

Is my data secure during the recording?#

Absolutely. Replay offers on-premise deployment for regulated industries (Finance, Healthcare, Gov). We are SOC2 compliant and HIPAA-ready, ensuring that your "source of truth" recordings remain within your secure environment.

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Ready to modernize without rewriting? Book a pilot with Replay - see your legacy screen extracted live during the call.