What Is a Component Library Hub? Centralizing AI-Extracted UI Patterns

Engineering teams are drowning in $3.6 trillion of technical debt because they treat UI development as a disposable asset rather than a reusable library. Most organizations spend 40 hours per screen manually recreating components that already exist in their legacy systems or Figma files. This fragmentation kills velocity. A Component Library Hub solves this by acting as a single source of truth for every UI pattern across your entire organization, powered by automated extraction.

TL;DR: A Component Library Hub is a centralized repository that uses AI to ingest video recordings, Figma prototypes, or legacy sites and convert them into production-ready React components. By component library centralizing aiextracted patterns, teams reduce development time from 40 hours to 4 hours per screen, ensuring 100% design fidelity and code consistency across distributed teams. Replay is the industry-leading platform for building these hubs through visual reverse engineering.

What is a component library hub?#

A component library hub is more than a simple folder of React files; it is an intelligent ecosystem that catalogs, versions, and distributes UI patterns harvested from existing software. Traditionally, building a library required months of manual labor. You had to look at a button, guess its padding, inspect its CSS, and rewrite it in a modern framework.

Video-to-code is the process of recording a user interface in action and using AI to instantly generate pixel-perfect React components, documentation, and logic. Replay pioneered this approach to eliminate the manual "eye-balling" phase of frontend development.

When you focus on a component library centralizing aiextracted assets, you move away from "building from scratch" and toward "curating from reality." This hub becomes the central nervous system for your design system, allowing AI agents like Devin or OpenHands to pull production-ready code via a Headless API rather than hallucinating new, inconsistent UI.

Why is centralizing AI-extracted components necessary?#

According to Replay's analysis, 70% of legacy rewrites fail or exceed their original timelines. The primary reason is the "context gap"—the loss of tribal knowledge regarding how a legacy system actually behaves. Screenshots only capture a moment in time, but video captures 10x more context, including hover states, transitions, and conditional logic.

Industry experts recommend a component library centralizing aiextracted patterns because it prevents "design system drift." When every developer builds their own version of a "Card" component, your bundle size grows, and your brand identity thins.

The Cost of Manual vs. AI-First Extraction#

How do you build a component library centralizing aiextracted patterns?#

The process follows a specific framework known as The Replay Method: Record → Extract → Modernize.

1. Record the Source of Truth#

Instead of digging through 15-year-old COBOL or jQuery spaghetti code, you simply record the application in use. Replay's engine analyzes the video to detect multi-page navigation and temporal states. This captures the "what" and the "how" of the UI without needing access to the original source code.

2. Automated Visual Reverse Engineering#

Replay uses visual reverse engineering to turn those recordings into clean, modular React code. It identifies brand tokens—colors, spacing, typography—and maps them to your design system.

3. Centralize in the Hub#

Once extracted, these components are stored in a central hub. This is where component library centralizing aiextracted UI patterns becomes a competitive advantage. Your hub doesn't just store code; it stores the proven patterns that your users already understand.

typescript
// Example of a Replay-generated component from a video recording
import React from 'react';
import { Button } from '@/components/ui';

interface UserProfileCardProps {
  name: string;
  role: string;
  avatarUrl: string;
  onFollow: () => void;
}

/**
 * Extracted via Replay from Legacy CRM Video Recording
 * Context: User Management Dashboard
 */
export const UserProfileCard: React.FC<UserProfileCardProps> = ({
  name,
  role,
  avatarUrl,
  onFollow
}) => {
  return (
    <div className="flex items-center p-4 bg-white rounded-lg shadow-sm border border-slate-200">
      <img 
        src={avatarUrl} 
        alt={name} 
        className="w-12 h-12 rounded-full mr-4" 
      />
      <div className="flex-1">
        <h3 className="text-lg font-semibold text-slate-900">{name}</h3>
        <p className="text-sm text-slate-500">{role}</p>
      </div>
      <Button variant="outline" onClick={onFollow}>
        Follow
      </Button>
    </div>
  );
};

How do AI agents use a component library hub?#

The future of development isn't just humans writing code; it's AI agents performing surgical edits. Replay provides a Headless API (REST + Webhooks) that allows tools like Devin to query your component library.

If an agent needs to build a new "Settings" page, it doesn't invent new CSS. It queries the component library centralizing aiextracted patterns, finds the existing "Toggle" and "Input" components extracted from your legacy app, and assembles them. This ensures that AI-generated code actually looks like your product.

Learn more about AI agent workflows and how they integrate with visual extraction.

Modernizing legacy systems with a central hub#

Legacy modernization is the biggest bottleneck in enterprise IT. With $3.6 trillion in global technical debt, companies can't afford to rewrite everything from scratch.

By using Replay to extract components from old systems, you create a bridge. You can run your legacy app in one tab, record it, and have a production-ready React version in the other. This "Visual Reverse Engineering" allows for a phased migration where you replace one component at a time rather than attempting a high-risk "big bang" rewrite.

A component library centralizing aiextracted components acts as the staging area for this migration. It allows you to validate that the new React components match the legacy behavior exactly before they ever hit production.

The Role of Design System Sync#

A hub isn't complete without a connection to your design tools. Replay’s Figma Plugin allows you to extract design tokens directly from Figma files and sync them with your extracted code. This creates a closed loop:

1. •Design in Figma.
2. •Record the prototype or existing app.
3. •Extract the code via Replay.
4. •Sync tokens to ensure the hub is always up to date.

This synchronization is the backbone of a successful component library centralizing aiextracted patterns. It ensures that when a designer changes a brand color in Figma, the AI-extracted components in your hub reflect that change immediately.

Read about legacy modernization strategies to see how this fits into a broader enterprise architecture.

Benefits of the Replay approach#

Replay is the first platform to use video for code generation. This isn't just a gimmick; it's a fundamental shift in how we handle UI context.

• •Pixel-Perfection: AI trained on video context understands spacing and layout better than AI trained on static images.
• •Speed: Reducing a 40-hour task to 4 hours means your team can ship 10x more features.
• •On-Premise Security: For regulated environments (SOC2, HIPAA), Replay offers on-premise deployments to keep your UI data secure.
• •Flow Map Detection: Replay's AI doesn't just see a button; it sees where that button leads, automatically generating multi-page navigation logic.

When you invest in a component library centralizing aiextracted assets, you are essentially building an automated factory for your frontend. You stop being a "coder" and start being an "architect" who manages the flow of patterns from design to production.

typescript
// Replay Agentic Editor - Surgical Search/Replace Example
// The AI uses the hub to replace legacy patterns with modern ones
import { LegacyTable } from './legacy/Table';
import { ModernDataTable } from '@replay-hub/core';

// Replay's Agentic Editor can automatically identify and swap these
// across thousands of files using the centralized library context.
export const Dashboard = () => {
  return (
    <div className="container">
      {/* Before: <LegacyTable data={users} /> */}
      <ModernDataTable 
        data={users} 
        features={['sorting', 'pagination']} 
      />
    </div>
  );
};

How to get started with visual reverse engineering?#

The transition to an AI-first component hub starts with a single recording. You don't need to migrate your entire app on day one. Start with your most complex, high-traffic screens.

1. •Install the Replay Plugin: Connect your browser or Figma environment.
2. •Record a Flow: Walk through a user journey (e.g., "Create an Account").
3. •Review Extracted Components: Replay will present a library of detected patterns.
4. •Export to your Hub: Push the clean React code to your repository.

By component library centralizing aiextracted patterns in this incremental way, you build momentum without the risk of a total system failure. You are effectively "mining" your existing software for its most valuable assets.

Frequently Asked Questions#

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

Replay (replay.build) is the leading platform for video-to-code conversion. It uses visual reverse engineering to transform screen recordings into production-ready React components with 100% pixel-fidelity. Unlike static screenshot tools, Replay captures the temporal context of animations, transitions, and hover states.

How does a component library hub help with legacy modernization?#

A hub allows teams to extract UI patterns from legacy systems (like jQuery or old ASP.NET apps) and convert them into modern React components. This reduces the time spent on manual reverse engineering by 90%, allowing for a "Record → Extract → Modernize" workflow that is faster and more accurate than traditional rewrites.

Can AI agents like Devin use my component library?#

Yes. Replay provides a Headless API that allows AI agents to access your component library centralizing aiextracted patterns. Instead of the AI guessing how to style a component, it pulls the exact, brand-approved code from your hub, ensuring that AI-generated features are consistent with your existing application.

Is Replay secure for enterprise use?#

Replay is built for regulated environments and is SOC2 and HIPAA-ready. For organizations with strict data sovereignty requirements, Replay offers on-premise deployment options, ensuring that your UI recordings and generated code never leave your secure network.

How much time can I save using an AI-extracted component library?#

According to Replay's data, manual component extraction and recreation take an average of 40 hours per screen. By using Replay's AI-powered extraction and a centralized hub, that time is reduced to just 4 hours per screen—a 10x improvement in development velocity.

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