ScreenCoder: Advancing Visual-to-Code Generation for Front-End Automation via Modular Multimodal Agents
On the map: LLM agents and tool use → GUI and mobile agents
Abstract (arXiv)
Automating the transformation of user interface (UI) designs into front-end code holds significant promise for accelerating software development and democratizing design workflows. While multimodal large language models (MLLMs) can translate images to code, they often fail on complex UIs, struggling to unify visual perception, layout planning, and code synthesis within a single monolithic model, which leads to frequent perception and planning errors. To address this, we propose ScreenCoder, a modular multi-agent framework that decomposes the task into three interpretable stages: grounding, planning, and generation. By assigning these distinct responsibilities to specialized agents, our framework achieves significantly higher robustness and fidelity than end-to-end approaches. Furthermore, ScreenCoder serves as a scalable data engine, enabling us to generate high-quality image-code pairs. We use this data to fine-tune open-source MLLM via a dual-stage pipeline of supervised fine-tuning and reinforcement learning, demonstrating substantial gains in its UI generation capabilities. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our approach achieves state-of-the-art performance in layout accuracy, structural coherence, and code correctness. Our code is made publicly available at https://github.com/leigest519/ScreenCoder.
Key facts. Cited by 23 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in GUI and mobile agents, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use. Builds on 21 of its 32 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 30 Jul 2025.
Builds on
21 of 32 references.
References · 21
- 2021Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervisioncited by 33,456
- 2024DeepSeekMath: Pushing the Limits of Mathematical Reasoning in Open Language Modelscited by 8,851
- 2023Visual Instruction Tuningcited by 7,792
- 2023BLIP-2: Bootstrapping Language-Image Pre-training with Frozen Image Encoders and Large Language Modelscited by 6,069
- 2022Flamingo: a Visual Language Model for Few-Shot Learningcited by 4,337
- 2023MiniGPT-4: Enhancing Vision-Language Understanding with Advanced Large Language Modelscited by 2,689
- 2023PaLM-E: An Embodied Multimodal Language Modelcited by 2,037
- 2024LlamaFactory: Unified Efficient Fine-Tuning of 100+ Language Modelscited by 1,442
- 2023The Dawn of LMMs: Preliminary Explorations with GPT-4V(ision)cited by 677
- 2021Multimodal Few-Shot Learning with Frozen Language Modelscited by 657
- 2021VisualGPT: Data-efficient Adaptation of Pretrained Language Models for Image Captioningcited by 190
- 2024Design2Code: Benchmarking Multimodal Code Generation for Automated Front-End Engineeringcited by 146
9 more
- 2024Unlocking the conversion of Web Screenshots into HTML Code with the WebSight Datasetcited by 126
- 2017pix2code: Generating Code from a Graphical User Interface Screenshotcited by 113
- 2025DesignBench: A Comprehensive Benchmark for MLLM-based Front-end Code Generationcited by 41
- 2021Screen Parsing: Towards Reverse Engineering of UI Models from Screenshotscited by 32
- 2024MRWeb: An Exploration of Generating Multi-Page Resource-Aware Web Code from UI Designscited by 23
- 2025UICopilot: Automating UI Synthesis via Hierarchical Code Generation from Webpage Designscited by 22
- 2025MLLM-Based UI2Code Automation Guided by UI Layout Informationcited by 17
- 2018Automated Reporting of GUI Design Violations for Mobile Appscited by 15
- 2017Classifying and Qualifying GUI Defectscited by 5
Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2025: 8; 2026: 15.
23 papers.
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- 2025MGA: Memory-Driven GUI Agent for Observation-Centric Interactioncited by 18
- 2025VinciCoder: Unifying Multimodal Code Generation via Coarse-to-fine Visual Reinforcement Learningcited by 18
- 2025From Code Foundation Models to Agents and Applications: A Comprehensive Survey and Practical Guide to Code Intelligencecited by 13
- 2026Generative Visual Code Mobile World Modelscited by 13
- 2025UI2Code^N: UI-to-Code Generation as Interactive Visual Optimizationcited by 12
- 2025IWR-Bench: Can LVLMs reconstruct interactive webpage from a user interaction video?cited by 10
- 2025WebVIA: A Web-based Vision-Language Agentic Framework for Interactive and Verifiable UI-to-Code Generationcited by 8
- 2025Widget2Code: From Visual Widgets to UI Code via Multimodal LLMscited by 8
- 2025Automatically Generating Web Applications from Requirements Via Multi-Agent Test-Driven Developmentcited by 5
- 2026GeoTikzBridge: Advancing Multimodal Code Generation for Geometric Perception and Reasoningcited by 3
- 2026MM-WebAgent: A Hierarchical Multimodal Web Agent for Webpage Generationcited by 3
- 2026FailureMem: A Failure-Aware Multimodal Framework for Autonomous Software Repaircited by 2
11 more
- 2026Rubrics as Visual-Repair Context for Self-Evolving UI-to-Code Generationcited by 2
- 2026Self-Distillation Policy Optimization via Visual Feedback: Bridging Code and Visual Artifactscited by 1
- 2026Video2Code: Generating Interactive Webpages from UI Videos via Action-Aware Revisitcited by 1
- 2026UniCoder: Unified Visual-to-Code Generation via Symbolic Rewards and Reference-Guided Code Optimizationcited by 1
- 2026Vibe AIGC: A New Paradigm for Content Generation via Agentic Orchestrationcited by 0
- 2026DOne: Decoupling Structure and Rendering for High-Fidelity Design-to-Code Generationcited by 0
- 2026Imperfect Visual Verification for Code Edition : A Case Study on TikZcited by 0
- 2026LongWebBench: Evaluating Structural and Functional Webpage Generation in Long-Horizon Settingscited by 0
- 2026Looks Right, Works Right: A Project-Level Benchmark for Multi-Screen Mobile App Generationcited by 0
- 2026SchemaGUI: A Schema-Driven Benchmark for Controllable GUI Generation Evaluationcited by 0
- 2026Agentic Visual Generation: From Generative Models to Agentic Controlcited by 0
- 2026Agentic Visual Generation: From Generative Models to Agentic Control6 Sep 2026
- 2026Rubrics as Visual-Repair Context for Self-Evolving UI-to-Code Generation25 Aug 2026
- 2026SchemaGUI: A Schema-Driven Benchmark for Controllable GUI Generation Evaluation23 Aug 2026
- 2026UniCoder: Unified Visual-to-Code Generation via Symbolic Rewards and Reference-Guided Code Optimization30 Jun 2026
- 2026Video2Code: Generating Interactive Webpages from UI Videos via Action-Aware Revisit16 Jun 2026
- 2026LongWebBench: Evaluating Structural and Functional Webpage Generation in Long-Horizon Settings16 Jun 2026
- 2026Self-Distillation Policy Optimization via Visual Feedback: Bridging Code and Visual Artifacts9 Jun 2026
- 2026Looks Right, Works Right: A Project-Level Benchmark for Multi-Screen Mobile App Generation29 May 2026
- 2026MM-WebAgent: A Hierarchical Multimodal Web Agent for Webpage Generation16 Apr 2026
- 2026Imperfect Visual Verification for Code Edition : A Case Study on TikZ9 Apr 2026
- 2026GeoTikzBridge: Advancing Multimodal Code Generation for Geometric Perception and Reasoning24 Mar 2026
- 2026FailureMem: A Failure-Aware Multimodal Framework for Autonomous Software Repair18 Mar 2026
11 more
- 2026DOne: Decoupling Structure and Rendering for High-Fidelity Design-to-Code Generation12 Mar 2026
- 2026Vibe AIGC: A New Paradigm for Content Generation via Agentic Orchestration4 Feb 2026
- 2026Generative Visual Code Mobile World Models2 Feb 2026
- 2025Widget2Code: From Visual Widgets to UI Code via Multimodal LLMs22 Dec 2025
- 2025From Code Foundation Models to Agents and Applications: A Comprehensive Survey and Practical Guide to Code Intelligence23 Nov 2025
- 2025UI2Code^N: UI-to-Code Generation as Interactive Visual Optimization11 Nov 2025
- 2025WebVIA: A Web-based Vision-Language Agentic Framework for Interactive and Verifiable UI-to-Code Generation9 Nov 2025
- 2025VinciCoder: Unifying Multimodal Code Generation via Coarse-to-fine Visual Reinforcement Learning1 Nov 2025
- 2025MGA: Memory-Driven GUI Agent for Observation-Centric Interaction28 Oct 2025
- 2025Automatically Generating Web Applications from Requirements Via Multi-Agent Test-Driven Development29 Sep 2025
- 2025IWR-Bench: Can LVLMs reconstruct interactive webpage from a user interaction video?29 Sep 2025
- 2025From Code Foundation Models to Agents and Applications: A Comprehensive Survey and Practical Guide to Code Intelligencecited by 13
- 2025WebVIA: A Web-based Vision-Language Agentic Framework for Interactive and Verifiable UI-to-Code Generationcited by 8
- 2025Automatically Generating Web Applications from Requirements Via Multi-Agent Test-Driven Developmentcited by 5
- 2026MM-WebAgent: A Hierarchical Multimodal Web Agent for Webpage Generationcited by 3
- 2026Vibe AIGC: A New Paradigm for Content Generation via Agentic Orchestrationcited by 0
- 2026Agentic Visual Generation: From Generative Models to Agentic Controlcited by 0
- 2026Agentic Visual Generation: From Generative Models to Agentic Control6 Sep 2026
- 2026MM-WebAgent: A Hierarchical Multimodal Web Agent for Webpage Generation16 Apr 2026
- 2026Vibe AIGC: A New Paradigm for Content Generation via Agentic Orchestration4 Feb 2026
- 2025From Code Foundation Models to Agents and Applications: A Comprehensive Survey and Practical Guide to Code Intelligence23 Nov 2025
- 2025WebVIA: A Web-based Vision-Language Agentic Framework for Interactive and Verifiable UI-to-Code Generation9 Nov 2025
- 2025Automatically Generating Web Applications from Requirements Via Multi-Agent Test-Driven Development29 Sep 2025
- 2025MGA: Memory-Driven GUI Agent for Observation-Centric Interactioncited by 18
- 2025Widget2Code: From Visual Widgets to UI Code via Multimodal LLMscited by 8
- 2026Rubrics as Visual-Repair Context for Self-Evolving UI-to-Code Generationcited by 2
- 2026UniCoder: Unified Visual-to-Code Generation via Symbolic Rewards and Reference-Guided Code Optimizationcited by 1
- 2026DOne: Decoupling Structure and Rendering for High-Fidelity Design-to-Code Generationcited by 0
- 2026LongWebBench: Evaluating Structural and Functional Webpage Generation in Long-Horizon Settingscited by 0
- 2026Rubrics as Visual-Repair Context for Self-Evolving UI-to-Code Generation25 Aug 2026
- 2026UniCoder: Unified Visual-to-Code Generation via Symbolic Rewards and Reference-Guided Code Optimization30 Jun 2026
- 2026LongWebBench: Evaluating Structural and Functional Webpage Generation in Long-Horizon Settings16 Jun 2026
- 2026DOne: Decoupling Structure and Rendering for High-Fidelity Design-to-Code Generation12 Mar 2026
- 2025Widget2Code: From Visual Widgets to UI Code via Multimodal LLMs22 Dec 2025
- 2025MGA: Memory-Driven GUI Agent for Observation-Centric Interaction28 Oct 2025
- 2026Generative Visual Code Mobile World Modelscited by 13
- 2026Generative Visual Code Mobile World Models2 Feb 2026
- 2025VinciCoder: Unifying Multimodal Code Generation via Coarse-to-fine Visual Reinforcement Learningcited by 18
- 2025UI2Code^N: UI-to-Code Generation as Interactive Visual Optimizationcited by 12
- 2025IWR-Bench: Can LVLMs reconstruct interactive webpage from a user interaction video?cited by 10
- 2026FailureMem: A Failure-Aware Multimodal Framework for Autonomous Software Repaircited by 2
- 2026Self-Distillation Policy Optimization via Visual Feedback: Bridging Code and Visual Artifactscited by 1
- 2026Video2Code: Generating Interactive Webpages from UI Videos via Action-Aware Revisitcited by 1
- 2026Imperfect Visual Verification for Code Edition : A Case Study on TikZcited by 0
- 2026Looks Right, Works Right: A Project-Level Benchmark for Multi-Screen Mobile App Generationcited by 0
- 2026SchemaGUI: A Schema-Driven Benchmark for Controllable GUI Generation Evaluationcited by 0
- 2026SchemaGUI: A Schema-Driven Benchmark for Controllable GUI Generation Evaluation23 Aug 2026
- 2026Video2Code: Generating Interactive Webpages from UI Videos via Action-Aware Revisit16 Jun 2026
- 2026Self-Distillation Policy Optimization via Visual Feedback: Bridging Code and Visual Artifacts9 Jun 2026
- 2026Looks Right, Works Right: A Project-Level Benchmark for Multi-Screen Mobile App Generation29 May 2026
- 2026Imperfect Visual Verification for Code Edition : A Case Study on TikZ9 Apr 2026
- 2026FailureMem: A Failure-Aware Multimodal Framework for Autonomous Software Repair18 Mar 2026
- 2025UI2Code^N: UI-to-Code Generation as Interactive Visual Optimization11 Nov 2025
- 2025VinciCoder: Unifying Multimodal Code Generation via Coarse-to-fine Visual Reinforcement Learning1 Nov 2025
- 2025IWR-Bench: Can LVLMs reconstruct interactive webpage from a user interaction video?29 Sep 2025
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