Stop Paying Consultants for Archaeology: Why Your Business Needs Logic Extraction Not Code Discovery

Every year, Fortune 500 companies spend millions paying consultants to act as software archaeologists, manually digging through layers of spaghetti code to document logic that should have been documented a decade ago. It is a massive, systemic waste of capital. These consultants don't build new features; they charge you $300 an hour to tell you what your own system does, only to deliver a 200-page PDF that is obsolete the moment it's saved to SharePoint.

The $3.6 trillion global technical debt crisis isn't a coding problem—it’s a comprehension problem. When 67% of legacy systems lack any meaningful documentation, leadership defaults to the "Big Bang Rewrite." They hire a Tier-1 consulting firm, wait 24 months, spend $10M+, and then watch as the project joins the 70% of legacy rewrites that fail to meet their original goals.

TL;DR: Stop paying for manual discovery; legacy modernization should be driven by visual logic extraction that turns real user workflows into documented, production-ready React components in days rather than years.

The Archaeology Tax: Why Manual Discovery is a Billion-Dollar Sinkhole#

In the enterprise, "discovery" is often a euphemism for "we have no idea how this works." Traditional consultants approach this by interviewing retired developers, reading COBOL or legacy Java line-by-line, and drawing brittle diagrams in Lucidchart. This is "Software Archaeology." It is slow, prone to human error, and focuses on the wrong thing: the code itself.

The code isn't the truth; the business logic is the truth. The code is just a (likely poor) implementation of that logic. When you pay consultants to "discover" your code, you are paying them to reverse-engineer the implementation rather than capturing the intent.

The Modernization Reality Gap#

⚠️ Warning: If your modernization roadmap starts with a 6-month "Discovery Phase" led by external consultants, you have already lost. You are paying for information you already own, just in a format you can't read.

From Black Box to Documented Codebase: The Shift to Logic Extraction#

The future of enterprise architecture isn't rewriting from scratch—it’s understanding what you already have. We need to move from "Code Discovery" (reading the past) to "Logic Extraction" (capturing the present).

Visual Reverse Engineering changes the unit of work. Instead of a developer reading 50,000 lines of code to understand a claims processing screen, they simply record a user performing that task. Replay treats the video and the underlying execution trace as the "Source of Truth." By observing the application in motion, we can extract the exact state transitions, API calls, and UI components required to replicate that functionality in a modern stack.

Why Video is the Ultimate Source of Truth#

When a user interacts with a legacy system, the system is forced to reveal its secrets. Every hidden validation rule, every obscure edge case, and every legacy API quirk must manifest in the browser or the terminal for the application to function.

By capturing these workflows, Replay bypasses the need for "archaeology." We aren't guessing what the code does; we are observing what it actually does.

• •Eliminate Guesswork: No more "I think this button triggers a SOAP call."
• •Capture Tribal Knowledge: Record the experts before they retire.
• •Automated Documentation: The system generates the specs while you work.

💰 ROI Insight: Manual documentation of a single complex enterprise screen takes an average of 40 hours. With Replay’s visual extraction, that time is reduced to 4 hours—a 90% reduction in labor costs.

Technical Deep Dive: Generating Modern Components from Legacy Traces#

Logic extraction isn't just about screenshots. It's about capturing the "DNA" of the application. When Replay records a workflow, it maps the DOM mutations, network requests, and state changes. This allows the AI Automation Suite to generate clean, modular React components that preserve business logic while shedding technical debt.

Example: Legacy Logic to Modern TypeScript#

Consider a legacy insurance form with complex, undocumented validation logic hidden in a 5,000-line jQuery file. Traditional discovery would take weeks to map. Replay extracts the behavior and generates a clean implementation.

typescript
// @replay-generated: ClaimsValidationComponent
// Logic extracted from: /legacy/claims/v2/validator.js (Workflow: "Submit New Claim")

import React, { useState, useEffect } from 'react';
import { ModernInput, ValidationAlert } from '@enterprise-ds/core';

interface ClaimData {
  policyId: string;
  incidentDate: string;
  claimAmount: number;
}

export function ExtractedClaimForm() {
  const [formData, setFormData] = useState<Partial<ClaimData>>({});
  const [isValid, setIsValid] = useState(false);

  // Business Logic Preserved: Incident date cannot be > 30 days in the past 
  // for "Type-A" policies (Extracted from legacy trace 0x442bf)
  const validatePolicyDate = (date: string) => {
    const thirtyDaysAgo = new Date();
    thirtyDaysAgo.setDate(thirtyDaysAgo.getDate() - 30);
    return new Date(date) > thirtyDaysAgo;
  };

  return (
    <form className="space-y-4">
      <ModernInput 
        label="Policy ID"
        onChange={(val) => setFormData({...formData, policyId: val})}
      />
      {/* ... more generated fields ... */}
      {!isValid && <ValidationAlert message="Invalid Incident Date" />}
    </form>
  );
}

This isn't just a "transpilation." It's a reconstruction. Replay identifies the intent of the component and maps it to your modern Design System (Library).

💡 Pro Tip: Use Replay to generate your API Contracts simultaneously. By capturing the network traffic during a recording, the platform automatically generates OpenAPI/Swagger specs for legacy endpoints that have never been documented.

The 3-Step Path to Modernization Without the Rewrite#

If you want to stop the bleeding of consultant fees, you must operationalize your modernization. Stop treating it as a "project" and start treating it as an "extraction pipeline."

Step 1: Workflow Recording#

Identify the top 20% of workflows that drive 80% of your business value. Have your subject matter experts (SMEs) record themselves performing these tasks using Replay. This captures the "Black Box" behavior without requiring a single developer to look at legacy code.

Step 2: Visual Reverse Engineering & Extraction#

Use the Replay Blueprints editor to analyze the recorded flows. The platform automatically identifies UI patterns, data structures, and API dependencies.

• •Library: Map legacy UI elements to your modern React Design System.
• •Flows: Visualize the architecture and state transitions.
• •Technical Debt Audit: Identify which parts of the legacy logic are redundant or dead code.

Step 3: Automated Code Generation#

Generate the target codebase. Replay doesn't just give you UI; it provides:

1. •React Components: Clean, documented, and typed.
2. •E2E Tests: Playwright or Cypress tests that mirror the original recording.
3. •API Contracts: TypeScript interfaces for all backend interactions.

typescript
// Example: Generated E2E Test ensuring parity with legacy behavior
import { test, expect } from '@playwright/test';

test('Extracted Claim Flow Parity Test', async ({ page }) => {
  await page.goto('/claims/new');
  await page.fill('[data-testid="policy-id"]', 'POL-88234');
  await page.click('[data-testid="submit-btn"]');
  
  // This assertion is based on the recorded behavior of the legacy system
  const response = await page.waitForResponse('**/api/v1/claims/validate');
  expect(response.status()).toBe(200);
});

Built for the Regulated Enterprise#

We understand that Financial Services, Healthcare, and Government agencies can't just "upload code to the cloud." Technical debt in these sectors is often protected by layers of compliance and security requirements.

Replay was built for these environments:

• •SOC2 & HIPAA Ready: Data privacy is baked into the extraction process.
• •On-Premise Availability: Keep your legacy traces and generated code within your own perimeter.
• •PII Redaction: Automated masking of sensitive data during the recording process.

The "Archaeology" approach isn't just slow; it's a security risk. Every month you spend in "discovery" is another month your business runs on unpatched, vulnerable legacy infrastructure. Speed is a security feature.

Challenging the "Big Bang" Orthodoxy#

The consulting industry thrives on the "Big Bang" rewrite because it maximizes billable hours. They want you to believe that you can't move forward until you've mapped every inch of the past.

They are wrong.

The future of the Enterprise Architect is to be a curator of logic, not a janitor of code. By using Visual Reverse Engineering, you can bypass the "Discovery" phase entirely. You don't need to know how the legacy system was built; you only need to know what it does.

When you use Replay, you are moving from a world of assumptions (what the consultants think the code does) to a world of evidence (what the system actually does).

• •Legacy Rewrite Timeline: 18 months (Average)
• •Replay Modernization Timeline: Days to Weeks
• •Cost Savings: 70% average reduction in modernization budget

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Frequently Asked Questions#

How long does legacy extraction take?#

While a manual audit of a complex enterprise module can take 3-6 months, Replay can extract the functional logic and generate initial React components in 2-8 weeks. The recording of a workflow takes exactly as long as the workflow itself; the AI-assisted extraction happens in near real-time.

What about business logic preservation?#

This is the core strength of Replay. Unlike manual rewrites where logic is often "lost in translation," Replay captures the actual execution trace of the business logic. If a legacy system has a specific, weird validation rule for a Friday afternoon in November, Replay captures that behavior because it records the system's actual response to data, not just the code's intent.

Does Replay support non-web legacy systems?#

Yes. While the React component generation is optimized for web modernization, our AI Automation Suite can analyze and document logic from mainframe terminals, desktop applications (via image-to-logic mapping), and legacy thick clients.

How does this fit into a CI/CD pipeline?#

Replay is designed to be the "Modernization Engine." The generated components, API contracts, and E2E tests are pushed directly to your Git repository (GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket), where they undergo your standard code review and deployment processes.

Can we use our own Design System?#

Absolutely. The Library feature in Replay allows you to upload your existing React Design System. The extraction engine then maps legacy UI elements to your specific components, ensuring the "new" version of your app looks and feels exactly like your modern brand standards.

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