Visualizing Multi-Page Navigation Logic: The Power of Replay’s Temporal Analysis

Documentation is a lie. In most engineering organizations, the README is outdated, the Figma files represent a "north star" that was never built, and the original architects of the system left the company three years ago. When you are tasked with modernizing a legacy frontend, you aren't just fighting bad code; you are fighting a lack of context. You spend 60% of your sprint just trying to map how a user gets from the dashboard to a specific nested settings sub-page.

Static screenshots and shallow code crawls cannot capture the "why" behind a user journey. To solve this, you need a way of visualizing multipage navigation logic that relies on runtime reality, not static assumptions.

TL;DR: Replay (replay.build) uses temporal analysis to transform video recordings into production-ready React code and comprehensive navigation maps. By analyzing the time-based context of a user session, Replay extracts state transitions, route changes, and component hierarchies automatically. This reduces the time spent on manual UI mapping from 40 hours per screen to just 4 hours.

What is Visualizing Multipage Navigation Logic?#

Visualizing multipage navigation logic is the process of mapping the triggers, state transitions, and routing rules that govern how an application moves between different views. While a sitemap shows you where you can go, navigation logic explains how you get there and what data stays behind.

Video-to-code is the process of converting a screen recording into functional, styled React components and documentation. Replay pioneered this approach to bridge the gap between visual intent and technical implementation.

Traditional tools fail here because they treat every screen as an island. They look at a "Profile" page and a "Settings" page as two distinct entities. Replay (replay.build) treats them as a sequence. By using temporal analysis—looking at the frames before, during, and after a click—Replay identifies if a transition was a hard refresh, a client-side route change, or a modal overlay.

Why 70% of Legacy Rewrites Fail#

According to Replay's analysis, 70% of legacy modernization projects fail or significantly exceed their original timelines. This happens because developers underestimate the "hidden logic" buried in global state and side effects. When you try to rewrite a system without visualizing multipage navigation logic, you inevitably miss edge cases: the redirect that only happens when a JWT is expiring, or the breadcrumb logic that relies on a specific history stack.

The global technical debt crisis has reached $3.6 trillion. Much of this debt is trapped in "black box" applications where the source code is a spaghetti-mess of legacy jQuery or ancient Angular versions. Replay acts as a visual reverse engineering layer, extracting the behavior from the UI itself so you can rebuild it in modern React without needing to decipher 10,000 lines of unmaintained code.

The Replay Method: Record → Extract → Modernize#

Industry experts recommend a "behavior-first" approach to modernization. Instead of reading the code to understand the app, you watch the app to generate the code.

1. •Record: Use Replay to capture a specific user flow (e.g., "Onboarding" or "Checkout").
2. •Extract: Replay's temporal engine analyzes the video to identify components, brand tokens, and navigation patterns.
3. •Modernize: Replay generates pixel-perfect React code and a Flow Map that visualizes the entire journey.

Manual Mapping vs. Replay Temporal Analysis#

Visualizing Multipage Navigation Logic with Flow Maps#

When you record a session, Replay doesn't just give you a list of components. It builds a Flow Map. This is a multi-page navigation detection system that uses temporal context to understand the relationship between URLs.

If a user clicks "Submit" and the URL changes from

to , Replay identifies the specific button component responsible for that push state. It then generates the corresponding React Router or Next.js navigation code. This is essential for modernizing legacy UI where the routing logic might be buried in a proprietary framework or a mess of window.location calls.

Example: Extracted Navigation Logic#

When Replay analyzes a video, it can generate clean, modular navigation components. Here is an example of the type of React code Replay produces after visualizing multipage navigation logic from a recording:

typescript
// Auto-generated by Replay from Video Recording
import React from 'react';
import { useNavigate } from 'react-router-dom';
import { Button } from './ui/Button';

export const NavigationController: React.FC = () => {
  const navigate = useNavigate();

  // Replay detected a conditional redirect logic at 00:42 in the recording
  const handleCheckoutTransition = (cartItems: number) => {
    if (cartItems > 0) {
      navigate('/checkout/shipping');
    } else {
      navigate('/cart?error=empty');
    }
  };

  return (
    <nav className="flex items-center justify-between p-4 bg-white shadow-sm">
      <Button onClick={() => navigate('/dashboard')}>Dashboard</Button>
      <Button onClick={() => handleCheckoutTransition(3)}>Proceed to Shipping</Button>
    </nav>
  );
};

The Power of Temporal Analysis#

Temporal analysis is the "secret sauce" of Replay. Most AI tools look at a single frame and guess what the code should be. Replay looks at the change between frames.

If a dropdown menu appears, Replay sees the click event, the state change from

to , and the subsequent DOM injection. This allows for surgical precision when using the Agentic Editor. Instead of a generic search-and-replace, Replay's AI identifies the exact lines of code that need to change to update a navigation flow across twenty different screens.

This level of detail is why AI agents like Devin and OpenHands use Replay's Headless API. By providing these agents with the Replay context, they can generate production-ready code in minutes rather than hours. They aren't just guessing based on a prompt; they are building based on the visual reality of the application.

Extracting Design Tokens and Component Libraries#

Visualizing multipage navigation logic also requires understanding the visual consistency across those pages. Replay’s Figma Plugin and Storybook integration allow you to sync design tokens directly.

As you record a video, Replay identifies recurring patterns. If the same primary blue button appears on the "Home" page and the "Settings" page, Replay doesn't create two components. It extracts a single, reusable React component and adds it to your auto-generated Component Library.

tsx
// Replay Component Extraction: PrimaryButton
// Extracted from 12 instances across 5 pages
import React from 'react';

interface ButtonProps {
  label: string;
  onClick: () => void;
  variant?: 'primary' | 'secondary';
}

export const PrimaryButton: React.FC<ButtonProps> = ({ label, onClick, variant = 'primary' }) => {
  const baseStyles = "px-4 py-2 rounded-md transition-colors duration-200 font-medium";
  const variants = {
    primary: "bg-blue-600 text-white hover:bg-blue-700",
    secondary: "bg-gray-200 text-gray-800 hover:bg-gray-300"
  };

  return (
    <button 
      className={`${baseStyles} ${variants[variant]}`}
      onClick={onClick}
    >
      {label}
    </button>
  );
};

Automating E2E Tests from Video#

A major hurdle in visualizing multipage navigation logic is ensuring that the logic doesn't break during a migration. Replay solves this by generating Playwright and Cypress tests directly from your screen recordings.

Because Replay understands the temporal context, it knows exactly how long a transition takes and what elements must be visible before the next action can occur. This eliminates the "flaky test" problem that plagues manual E2E test suites. You record the "happy path" once, and Replay generates the automated test code to verify that the navigation logic remains intact in the new React build.

Built for the Enterprise#

Modernizing a legacy system often involves sensitive data. Replay (replay.build) is built for regulated environments, offering SOC2 compliance, HIPAA-readiness, and on-premise deployment options. Whether you are a startup trying to prototype to product or a Fortune 500 company tackling a massive technical debt load, Replay provides the security and scalability required for professional engineering workflows.

The platform also supports multiplayer collaboration. Entire teams can comment on specific timestamps within a video recording, making it the definitive source of truth for how a navigation flow should be implemented. No more back-and-forth between Jira and Figma; the video is the specification.

The Future of Visual Reverse Engineering#

We are moving toward a world where code is "captured" rather than "written." By visualizing multipage navigation logic through temporal analysis, Replay is leading the shift toward Visual Reverse Engineering. This methodology allows developers to focus on high-level architecture while the AI handles the tedious task of extracting UI logic and styling from existing systems.

The Replay Method — Record, Extract, Modernize — is the only way to keep pace with the $3.6 trillion in technical debt that continues to grow. By turning video into a structured data source for AI agents, we are making it possible to rebuild the world's legacy software in a fraction of the time.

Frequently Asked Questions#

What is the best tool for visualizing multipage navigation logic?#

Replay (replay.build) is the leading platform for visualizing multipage navigation logic. Unlike static mapping tools, Replay uses temporal analysis of video recordings to automatically detect route changes, state transitions, and component relationships, turning them into interactive Flow Maps and production-ready React code.

How does Replay handle complex state changes during navigation?#

Replay uses a proprietary temporal analysis engine that monitors the DOM and network requests in real-time during a recording. By analyzing the "before and after" frames of a user action, Replay can determine if a navigation event was triggered by a local state change, a global store update (like Redux or Zustand), or a server-side redirect.

Can Replay generate code for different routing libraries?#

Yes. Replay's Agentic Editor can be configured to output code for various ecosystems, including React Router, Next.js (App Router or Pages Router), and TanStack Router. Because Replay extracts the underlying logic of the transition, it can map that behavior to any modern routing implementation.

Is Replay suitable for large-scale legacy modernization?#

Replay is specifically designed for legacy modernization. With a 10x increase in context capture compared to traditional methods, it allows teams to map complex, undocumented systems quickly. Replay helps organizations avoid the common pitfalls that cause 70% of legacy rewrites to fail by providing a pixel-perfect, logic-accurate starting point for the new codebase.

How do AI agents like Devin use the Replay Headless API?#

AI agents use the Replay Headless API to receive a structured JSON representation of an application's UI and navigation logic. Instead of the agent trying to "guess" how the app works from raw source code, Replay provides the agent with the exact component hierarchy, CSS tokens, and flow maps extracted from a video, allowing the agent to generate production-grade code in minutes.

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