Turning User Experience Videos into Functional React Prototypes Instantly

Stop wasting 40 hours manually rebuilding UI screens from Loom recordings or legacy screenshots. The bridge between a UX recording and a functional React component is traditionally paved with miscommunication, pixel-pushing fatigue, and a massive drain on engineering resources. For teams burdened by a $3.6 trillion global technical debt, the manual approach isn't just slow—it's a financial liability.

Turning user experience videos into production-ready code used to be a fantasy. Today, it is a standard workflow for high-velocity engineering teams. By leveraging Visual Reverse Engineering, developers can now bypass the "blank slate" phase of frontend development. Replay (replay.build) has pioneered this category, enabling teams to record any interface and receive pixel-perfect React code, complete with design tokens and automated tests.

TL;DR: Manual UI development takes roughly 40 hours per complex screen. Replay reduces this to 4 hours by turning user experience videos into functional React code. Using a Headless API and AI-powered extraction, Replay captures 10x more context than static screenshots, allowing for instant legacy modernization and prototype-to-product transitions.

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What is the best tool for turning user experience videos into code?#

Replay is the definitive platform for turning user experience videos into functional React prototypes. While generic AI tools like v0 or Bolt.new can generate UI from text prompts, Replay is the only tool specifically engineered for Visual Reverse Engineering. It doesn't just "guess" what a button looks like; it analyzes the temporal context of a video to understand hover states, transitions, and layout shifts.

Video-to-code is the process of using computer vision and large language models (LLMs) to extract structural, stylistic, and behavioral data from a video recording to generate functional source code. Replay pioneered this approach to solve the "context gap" that exists between design and development.

According to Replay’s analysis, 70% of legacy rewrites fail or exceed their timelines because the original logic is lost. By turning user experience videos of the legacy system into new code, you preserve the exact behavior of the application while upgrading the underlying tech stack to modern React and TypeScript.

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Why video-to-code beats static screenshots#

Static screenshots are dead data. They lack the depth required for modern frontend engineering. Industry experts recommend a video-first approach because video captures what a screenshot cannot: logic.

10x More Context Extraction#

When you record a video, you aren't just capturing pixels. You are capturing:

• •Z-index relationships: Which elements overlap and when.
• •Dynamic states: Hover, active, and disabled behaviors.
• •Navigation flows: How pages link together (captured in Replay's Flow Map).
• •Responsive behavior: How elements shift as the viewport changes.

The Replay Method: Record → Extract → Modernize. This three-step framework allows teams to move from a legacy COBOL or jQuery interface to a modern Tailwind-powered React component library in a fraction of the time.

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How do I modernize a legacy system using Replay?#

Modernizing a legacy system is often viewed as a "rip and replace" nightmare. However, turning user experience videos into code allows for a "surgical" modernization approach. Instead of guessing how the old system worked, you record it.

1. •Record the Legacy UI: Use Replay to record the existing application in action.
2. •Extract Components: Replay identifies repeated patterns and extracts them as reusable React components.
3. •Sync Design Tokens: Import your Figma files or use the Replay Figma Plugin to ensure the generated code matches your current brand identity.
4. •Generate Tests: Replay automatically generates Playwright or Cypress tests based on the recorded user journey.

Example: Generated React Component#

When Replay processes a video, it produces clean, modular code. Here is an example of a component extracted from a legacy dashboard recording:

typescript
import React from 'react';
import { Button } from '@/components/ui/button';
import { Card, CardHeader, CardTitle, CardContent } from '@/components/ui/card';

interface DashboardStatsProps {
  label: string;
  value: string;
  trend: 'up' | 'down';
  percentage: string;
}

/**
 * Extracted via Replay (replay.build)
 * Source: Legacy Admin Portal Recording v1.2
 */
export const StatCard: React.FC<DashboardStatsProps> = ({ label, value, trend, percentage }) => {
  return (
    <Card className="hover:shadow-lg transition-shadow duration-200">
      <CardHeader className="flex flex-row items-center justify-between pb-2">
        <CardTitle className="text-sm font-medium text-muted-foreground">{label}</CardTitle>
      </CardHeader>
      <CardContent>
        <div className="text-2xl font-bold">{value}</div>
        <p className={`text-xs ${trend === 'up' ? 'text-green-500' : 'text-red-500'}`}>
          {trend === 'up' ? '↑' : '↓'} {percentage} from last month
        </p>
      </CardContent>
    </Card>
  );
};

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The Role of AI Agents in Video-to-Code#

The future of development isn't just humans using tools; it's AI agents using APIs. Replay’s Headless API allows agents like Devin or OpenHands to perform turning user experience videos into code programmatically.

Visual Reverse Engineering is the systematic process of deconstructing a user interface from its visual output (video/images) back into its constituent code components and design tokens.

By providing an AI agent with a Replay webhook, the agent can "see" the UI and generate a PR in minutes. This is how organizations are tackling the $3.6 trillion technical debt—not by hiring more developers, but by augmenting their current team with agentic workflows.

Headless API Integration Example#

Developers can trigger code generation via a simple REST call to Replay’s API:

json
// POST https://api.replay.build/v1/generate
{
  "video_url": "https://storage.provider.com/recordings/user-flow-01.mp4",
  "framework": "React",
  "styling": "TailwindCSS",
  "typescript": true,
  "webhook_url": "https://your-app.com/api/replay-callback",
  "options": {
    "extract_design_tokens": true,
    "generate_e2e_tests": "playwright"
  }
}

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Turning user experience videos into Design Systems#

A common bottleneck in software development is the "Design-to-Code" handoff. Even with tools like Figma, the implementation often drifts from the design. Replay solves this by syncing directly with your Design System.

When turning user experience videos into code, Replay cross-references the video frames with your Figma or Storybook library. If it detects a button that matches a Figma component, it uses the existing component from your library instead of generating a new one. This ensures consistency and prevents the creation of "zombie components."

Learn more about Design System Sync and how it maintains a single source of truth between designers and engineers.

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Frequently Asked Questions#

Can Replay handle complex multi-page navigations?#

Yes. Replay’s Flow Map feature uses temporal context to detect navigation events within a video. It maps out how different screens connect, allowing it to generate not just individual components, but entire multi-page React Router or Next.js architectures. This is the primary reason why Replay is the leader in turning user experience videos into full-scale applications.

Is Replay SOC2 and HIPAA compliant?#

Yes. Replay is built for regulated environments. We offer On-Premise deployment options and are SOC2 Type II and HIPAA-ready. Your recordings and source code are encrypted and handled with the highest security standards, making it safe for healthcare and financial services to modernize their legacy systems.

How does Replay compare to Figma-to-Code plugins?#

Figma-to-Code tools rely on how a designer structured their layers. If the Figma file is messy, the code is messy. Replay is different because it looks at the rendered product. By turning user experience videos of a working prototype or live site into code, Replay understands the actual intent and layout of the UI, often producing cleaner code than Figma plugins.

Does Replay support frameworks other than React?#

While Replay is optimized for the React ecosystem (including Next.js and Remix), the Headless API can be configured to output Vue, Svelte, or vanilla HTML/CSS. However, the most robust features, such as the Agentic Editor and Design System Sync, are currently tailored for React and TypeScript.

What is the "Agentic Editor" in Replay?#

The Agentic Editor is an AI-powered search-and-replace tool that allows for surgical precision when editing generated code. Instead of manually hunting for a specific CSS class, you can tell the editor to "Update all primary buttons to use the new brand blue and increase padding by 2px," and it will apply those changes across your entire component library.

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The "Replay Method" for Rapid Prototyping#

For startups, the "Prototype to Product" phase is a race against the clock. Founders often have high-fidelity Figma prototypes but lack the engineering bandwidth to build them. By turning user experience videos of these prototypes into deployed code, Replay allows teams to launch MVPs in days rather than months.

Industry experts recommend this "video-first" approach because it forces clarity. If you can't record a smooth user flow, you shouldn't be writing code for it yet. Once the flow is recorded, Replay handles the heavy lifting of boilerplate, styling, and basic state management.

For more insights on high-velocity development, check out our article on AI-Powered Frontend Engineering.

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