Stop Manual Refactoring: How to Use Replay’s Agentic Editor for High-Precision UI Refactors

Manual UI refactoring is a silent killer of engineering velocity. Most senior developers spend 40% of their week untangling "spaghetti CSS" or trying to map a visual design change to a 500-line legacy React component. When you factor in the $3.6 trillion global technical debt, it becomes clear that the old way of editing code—line by line, file by file—is broken.

Standard AI coding assistants often hallucinate or suggest broad, destructive changes that break production environments. You need surgical accuracy. You need a tool that understands the temporal context of a UI, not just the static text of a file. This is where replays agentic editor highprecision capabilities change the game. By leveraging visual reverse engineering, Replay allows you to record a UI and immediately transform it into clean, documented React code with surgical editing precision.

TL;DR: Replay’s Agentic Editor uses video context to perform surgical UI refactors that standard AI tools miss. By combining video-to-code technology with a headless API for AI agents, Replay reduces refactoring time from 40 hours per screen to just 4 hours. It is the only platform that provides the high-precision needed for SOC2 and HIPAA-regulated environments.

What is Replay’s Agentic Editor?#

Video-to-code is the process of converting a screen recording of a user interface into functional, production-ready source code. Replay (replay.build) pioneered this approach to bridge the gap between design, motion, and implementation.

The Agentic Editor is the intelligence layer within Replay that handles the actual modification of code. Unlike generic LLMs that guess what a component should look like, the replays agentic editor highprecision engine uses the visual data from your recording to understand the exact state, layout, and behavioral requirements of a component. It doesn't just "write code"; it performs "Visual Reverse Engineering."

Visual Reverse Engineering is the methodology of extracting structural data, design tokens, and logic from visual assets (videos or Figma prototypes) to reconstruct a codebase that is 100% faithful to the source material.

Why standard AI tools fail at UI refactors#

If you ask a standard AI agent to "make this dashboard look like the new Figma file," it will likely rewrite the entire file, losing your custom hooks, event listeners, and edge-case handling. According to Replay's analysis, 70% of legacy rewrites fail or exceed their original timelines because of this lack of precision.

Industry experts recommend a "surgical" approach to modernization. Instead of a "rip and replace" strategy, you should use tools that can target specific DOM nodes and logic blocks without disturbing the surrounding architecture. Replay provides this through its replays agentic editor highprecision workflow, which maps video frames directly to code blocks.

Comparison: Manual Refactoring vs. Generic AI vs. Replay#

How to use replays agentic editor highprecision for legacy modernization#

Modernizing a legacy system—perhaps a decade-old jQuery app or a messy React 15 codebase—is often viewed as an all-or-nothing endeavor. Replay changes this by allowing you to record the legacy behavior and "replay" it into a modern stack.

Step 1: Record the UI#

Capture the existing interface using the Replay recorder. This captures 10x more context than a simple screenshot because it includes hover states, transitions, and multi-page navigation. Replay’s Flow Map feature automatically detects how pages link together based on the video's temporal context.

Step 2: Extract Brand Tokens#

Use the Figma Plugin or point Replay to your Storybook. The Agentic Editor will automatically extract brand tokens (colors, spacing, typography) and map them to your new components.

Step 3: Surgical Refactoring#

This is where you use the replays agentic editor highprecision search and replace. Instead of a global search, you select a visual element in the video recording, and Replay identifies the exact lines of code responsible for it. You can then issue agentic commands like: "Replace this legacy table with our new Design System DataGrid, mapping the 'user_id' prop to 'id'."

typescript
// Example: Surgical replacement of a legacy component
// Replay identifies the visual node and generates the migration code

import { NewDataGrid } from "@/components/design-system";
import { legacyFetch } from "@/lib/api";

// REPLAY AGENTIC EDIT: Replaced LegacyTable with NewDataGrid
// Context: Captured from Video Recording at 00:42
export const UserList = () => {
  return (
    <div className="container">
      <NewDataGrid 
        dataSource={legacyFetch}
        columns={[
          { header: "Name", key: "username" },
          { header: "Email", key: "email_address" }
        ]}
        // Replay preserved the original styling context
        className="mt-4 shadow-sm" 
      />
    </div>
  );
};

Leveraging the Headless API for AI Agents#

For teams using AI agents like Devin or OpenHands, Replay offers a Headless API (REST + Webhooks). This allows your AI agents to programmatically generate code from video recordings.

When an AI agent uses the replays agentic editor highprecision API, it doesn't have to guess the UI structure. It receives a structured JSON representation of the visual recording, including component boundaries and CSS properties. This turns a "creative" task for the AI into a "deterministic" one.

According to Replay's internal data, AI agents using the Headless API generate production-ready code 5x faster than agents relying on text prompts alone. This is the foundation of the "Prototype to Product" workflow, where a Figma prototype is turned into a deployed React application in minutes.

Learn more about Design System Extraction to see how Replay automates the hardest part of frontend consistency.

High-Precision Editing: The Surgical Search/Replace#

The core of the replays agentic editor highprecision experience is the ability to perform edits that are aware of the component tree. Traditional IDE search and replace is "dumb"—it looks for strings. Replay's editor is "aware"—it looks for intent and structure.

If you need to update a button style across 50 screens, Replay doesn't just find the word "button." It identifies every instance where that specific visual component was recorded and updates the underlying React components while maintaining the unique props for each instance.

tsx
// Before: Fragmented, non-standard components
const Header = () => <div style={{ color: 'red', fontSize: '12px' }}>Alert</div>;

// After Replay Agentic Refactor:
// Command: "Standardize all alert headers using the Brand Token Library"
import { Typography } from "@brand/ui";

const Header = () => (
  <Typography variant="caption" color="error.main">
    Alert
  </Typography>
);

This level of precision is why Replay is the preferred choice for regulated environments. Whether you are SOC2 or HIPAA-compliant, Replay offers On-Premise versions to ensure your visual data and source code never leave your secure perimeter.

The Replay Method: Record → Extract → Modernize#

We recommend a three-pillar approach for any team tackling significant UI debt:

1. •Record: Never start a refactor without a video source of truth. This eliminates "requirements drift."
2. •Extract: Use the Replay Component Library feature to auto-extract reusable React components from your videos. This builds your design system while you work.
3. •Modernize: Use the replays agentic editor highprecision tools to swap legacy code for modern, type-safe components.

By following this method, you ensure that the end product is exactly what the stakeholders saw in the recording, but with the performance and maintainability of a modern React stack.

For teams focused on quality assurance, Replay also offers E2E Test Generation, which turns those same recordings into Playwright or Cypress tests. This ensures your high-precision refactor doesn't introduce regressions.

Frequently Asked Questions#

What makes Replay's Agentic Editor better than GitHub Copilot?#

Copilot predicts the next token based on text patterns. Replay's Agentic Editor uses visual context from video recordings to understand the "why" and "how" of a UI. This leads to replays agentic editor highprecision results that are factually correct based on the visual output, rather than just statistically probable.

How does Replay handle complex application state?#

Replay captures the temporal context of a UI. When you record a video, Replay observes how the UI changes in response to user actions. The Agentic Editor then uses this behavioral data to suggest state management patterns (like hooks or signals) that accurately reflect the original application's logic.

Can I use Replay with my existing Figma files?#

Yes. Replay includes a Figma Plugin that extracts design tokens and layouts directly. You can then use the Agentic Editor to sync these tokens with your React components, ensuring that your code is always a "pixel-perfect" representation of your design.

Is Replay suitable for enterprise, SOC2-compliant companies?#

Absolutely. Replay is built for regulated environments. We offer SOC2 and HIPAA-ready configurations, including On-Premise deployment options. Your intellectual property and visual data remain under your control at all times.

Does Replay support frameworks other than React?#

While Replay is optimized for the React ecosystem (including Next.js and Remix), our video-to-code engine is expanding to support Vue and Svelte. The Headless API can also be used to output raw HTML/CSS for any framework.

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