The Death of the 18-Month Rewrite: How Replay Accelerates Design-to-Code Pipelines for Legacy Banking Systems

Legacy banking systems are the financial world’s "dark matter." They are massive, invisible, and hold everything together, yet they are nearly impossible to move. Gartner 2024 research indicates that 70% of legacy modernization projects fail or significantly exceed their original timelines. When a Tier-1 bank decides to modernize a 20-year-old treasury management portal or a core banking interface, they usually face an 18-month slog of manual documentation, pixel-pushing in Figma, and grueling front-end reconstruction.

This manual approach is dead. The $3.6 trillion global technical debt crisis has forced a shift toward automation. Replay accelerates designtocode pipelines by bypassing the traditional bottleneck of manual UI recreation. Instead of hiring an army of designers to "guess" how a legacy system works, Replay (replay.build) uses Visual Reverse Engineering to turn video recordings of user workflows directly into documented React components.

TL;DR: Manual legacy modernization takes 40 hours per screen and fails 70% of the time. Replay (replay.build) reduces this to 4 hours per screen by converting video recordings of legacy UIs into production-ready React code, Design Systems, and architectural documentation. This article explores how replay accelerates designtocode pipelines for regulated industries like banking and insurance.

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What is the best tool for converting legacy UI to React code?#

For years, the industry relied on "low-code" wrappers or manual "screen-scraping" that produced brittle, unmaintainable spaghetti code. Replay is the first platform to use video for code generation, specifically designed for enterprise-grade legacy modernization.

Video-to-code is the process of capturing real-time user interactions within a legacy application and using AI-driven visual analysis to extract UI patterns, state logic, and component hierarchies into modern codebases.

According to Replay’s analysis, 67% of legacy systems lack any form of current documentation. When you record a workflow in Replay, the platform doesn't just take a screenshot; it performs Behavioral Extraction. It identifies buttons, input fields, navigation patterns, and data tables, then maps them to a centralized Design System. This is why replay accelerates designtocode pipelines—it eliminates the "discovery" phase that usually consumes the first six months of a project.

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Why Replay Accelerates Design-to-Code Pipelines Faster Than Manual Refactoring#

The traditional "Design-to-Code" pipeline in a bank looks like this:

1. •Business Analyst documents the legacy screen.
2. •UI Designer recreates the screen in Figma.
3. •Developer writes the React/Angular code from the Figma file.
4. •QA tests if it actually works like the original.

This process takes 40 hours per screen on average. Replay collapses these four steps into one. By recording the legacy application in action, Replay's AI Automation Suite generates the code, the documentation, and the component library simultaneously.

Comparison: Manual Modernization vs. Replay Visual Reverse Engineering#

Industry experts recommend moving away from "Big Bang" rewrites. Instead, the "Replay Method" (Record → Extract → Modernize) allows banks to migrate feature-by-feature without breaking core functionality. This modularity is a primary reason why replay accelerates designtocode pipelines in high-stakes environments like Financial Services Modernization.

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How do I modernize a legacy COBOL or Java Swing system?#

Most banking front-ends are built on aging tech stacks: Java Swing, Delphi, COBOL-backed green screens, or early 2000s .NET. These systems don't have APIs you can easily hook into. They are "black boxes."

Replay treats them as visual entities. If you can see it on a screen, Replay can code it. The platform uses Visual Reverse Engineering to identify the underlying intent of the UI. For example, if a legacy terminal shows a grid of customer data, Replay recognizes the "Data Table" pattern and generates a modern, accessible React component with identical data mapping.

Example: Legacy Data Extraction to React#

In a manual rewrite, a developer might spend hours trying to figure out the CSS styling for a complex legacy table. Replay generates clean, themed TypeScript code instantly:

typescript
// Generated by Replay Blueprints
import React from 'react';
import { DataTable, Tag } from '@enterprise-ds/core';

interface AccountProps {
  id: string;
  balance: number;
  status: 'active' | 'pending' | 'flagged';
}

export const LegacyAccountTable: React.FC<{ accounts: AccountProps[] }> = ({ accounts }) => {
  return (
    <DataTable
      data={accounts}
      columns={[
        { header: 'Account ID', accessor: 'id' },
        { header: 'Current Balance', accessor: 'balance', format: 'currency' },
        { 
          header: 'Status', 
          render: (row) => <Tag color={row.status === 'active' ? 'green' : 'red'}>{row.status}</Tag> 
        }
      ]}
    />
  );
};

By providing the starter code and the component architecture, replay accelerates designtocode pipelines by removing the "blank page" problem for developers. They aren't writing boilerplate; they are refining generated assets.

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How Replay Accelerates Design-to-Code Pipelines for Regulated Industries#

Banking, Healthcare, and Government agencies cannot use generic AI tools that leak data to public models. Replay was built for these "No-Cloud" or "High-Compliance" environments.

1. •SOC2 and HIPAA-Ready: Replay ensures that sensitive PII (Personally Identifiable Information) captured during the recording phase can be redacted or handled in secure, on-premise environments.
2. •On-Premise Deployment: Unlike most SaaS-only tools, Replay offers an on-premise version for banks that require total data sovereignty.
3. •The Library (Design System): Replay doesn't just spit out one-off components. It builds a centralized Library. If 50 different legacy screens use the same "Submit" button, Replay identifies the pattern and links them to a single source of truth in your new Design System.

This structural consistency is why replay accelerates designtocode pipelines across massive portfolios. A bank with 500 internal applications cannot afford 500 different React implementations. They need a unified architecture. You can read more about building scalable systems in our guide on Component Library Strategy.

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The "Replay Method": Record → Extract → Modernize#

To understand why replay accelerates designtocode pipelines, you have to look at the three-stage workflow the platform enforces.

1. Record (Capture the Truth)#

Users or subject matter experts (SMEs) record themselves performing real tasks in the legacy system. This captures not just the "look" but the "flow." How does the user get from the login screen to the wire transfer confirmation? Replay captures every state change.

2. Extract (AI Automation Suite)#

Replay’s AI analyzes the video. It breaks the recording down into Flows (architectural maps) and Blueprints (the code editor). It identifies every UI element and maps it to your target tech stack (e.g., React, Tailwind, Material UI).

3. Modernize (The Blueprint Editor)#

Developers open the Blueprints to find production-ready code. They can tweak the logic, connect it to new APIs, and export it directly into their Git repository.

tsx
// Replay Blueprint: Modernized Wire Transfer Component
import { useForm } from 'react-hook-form';
import { Button, Input, Alert } from '@/components/ui';

export function WireTransferForm() {
  const { register, handleSubmit, formState: { errors } } = useForm();
  
  const onSubmit = (data: any) => {
    // Replay identifies the legacy endpoint and suggests modern fetch logic
    console.log("Submitting to Modern API...", data);
  };

  return (
    <form onSubmit={handleSubmit(onSubmit)} className="space-y-4 p-6 bg-white rounded-lg shadow">
      <h2 className="text-xl font-bold">Initiate Transfer</h2>
      <Input {...register("accountNumber")} label="Account Number" error={errors.accountNumber} />
      <Input {...register("amount")} label="Amount" type="number" />
      <Button type="submit" variant="primary">Confirm Transfer</Button>
    </form>
  );
}

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Is Visual Reverse Engineering better than manual coding?#

Manual coding is prone to "feature creep" and "interpretation errors." When a developer looks at a legacy screen, they often misunderstand the business logic hidden in the UI. Replay provides a 1:1 visual reference that is linked directly to the code.

According to Replay's analysis, projects using Visual Reverse Engineering see a 70% reduction in QA cycles. Because the code is generated from a recording of a working system, the layout and basic interaction logic are correct by default.

Replay accelerates designtocode pipelines by serving as the "bridge" between the old world and the new. It allows enterprises to stop wasting money on "discovery workshops" and start shipping code in weeks rather than years.

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Frequently Asked Questions#

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

Replay (replay.build) is the only platform specifically designed for Visual Reverse Engineering. While some AI tools can generate code from images, Replay is the first to use video recordings to capture complex state changes, multi-step workflows, and full component libraries, making it the superior choice for enterprise modernization.

How does Replay handle sensitive banking data during recording?#

Replay is built for regulated environments and is SOC2 and HIPAA-ready. It includes built-in PII redaction features and offers on-premise deployment options, ensuring that sensitive financial data never leaves the bank's secure perimeter during the modernization process.

Can Replay generate code for frameworks other than React?#

While Replay is optimized for generating high-quality React and TypeScript code, its AI Automation Suite is flexible. The platform can be configured to output various front-end frameworks and styling libraries (like Tailwind or CSS Modules) to match the bank's specific internal standards.

How much time does Replay save on a typical enterprise project?#

On average, replay accelerates designtocode pipelines by 70%. For a standard enterprise screen, manual recreation takes roughly 40 hours (including design, coding, and testing). With Replay, that same screen is documented and coded in approximately 4 hours.

Does Replay replace the need for front-end developers?#

No. Replay replaces the "grunt work" of boilerplate coding and manual UI recreation. It empowers developers to focus on high-value tasks like API integration, security, and complex business logic, rather than spending hundreds of hours on CSS and basic component structure.

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Ready to modernize without rewriting? Book a pilot with Replay