Internationalize your codebase in under an hour with the Kilo Code AI Agent

At Prismy, we used to see internationalization as a massive headache: tedious, time-consuming, and with little immediate business value. But that was before the rise of AI agents like Kilo Code.

The classic problem: hitting the i18n wall

Early-stage teams move fast. User-facing texts are hardcoded everywhere. But the day inevitably comes when you need to support a second language. And that's when the fear kicks in:

• hundreds of files to modify,
• risk of git conflicts,
• weeks of manual work.

Some teams keep postponing. Others hire freelancers. But today, there's a much faster, scalable option.

AI agents like Kilo Code change the game

Where a human developer would painfully hunt for hardcoded strings, an AI agent like Kilo Code excels:

• identifying user-facing texts,
• cleanly extracting them into translation files with well-organized namespaces,
• continuously ensuring the codebase stays functional.

We tested Kilo Code on a reasonably large React project: 286 files, including 121 with hardcoded text. The result? Complete internationalization in under one hour.

🛠️ Our process

Our starting stack

• Frontend: React
• Backend: Node.js
• Goal: extract all hardcoded English strings
• AI tool: Kilo Code (VS Code extension)
• Translation management: Prismy

1. Installing Kilo Code

• Install the extension in VS Code
• Provide the OpenAI API key
• Select the orchestrator agent (which coordinates the code, debug, and architect sub-agents)

2. The prompt we used

Here is the prompt we provided to Kilo Code to launch the mission:

We need to internationalise our codebase, currently hardcoded in English.
What you need to do:
- knowing that our stack is JS/TS ; react on the front and node in the backend, choose i18n libraries compatible with both front & back, at least with the same syntax
- setup the lib and put a language selector in the user setting (do not need to be persisted in the backend for now)
- browse all the files of our codebase, and identify user-facing hardcoded texts, use the i18n library
- make sure to smartly use the i18n namespace features, so the keys are well sorted in the file
- for now, only create the key/values for the english file, we will later fill the french, do not translate anything for now
- make sure the project builds and run

3. The AI agent at work

Within minutes:

• Kilo Code installed i18next (smart choice, even though we hadn't specified any library),
• updated the configuration,
• started extracting hardcoded strings,
• ensured the app still compiled correctly after each change.

Watching files edit themselves live was truly impressive. After about 5 minutes, the project was partially internationalized and still fully functional.

4. Real-time collaboration

During the first pass, a namespace config issue caused keys to appear in the UI instead of translated texts. I simply sent a screenshot via Kilo Code's built-in chat. Within seconds, the agent identified and fixed the problem without me writing any code.

5. Divide and conquer

Instead of running a full extraction at once, I proceeded feature by feature (about 20 files per batch). After roughly ten iterations and less than an hour of actual work, the entire codebase was internationalized.

One PR later: done.

✨ The next step: scaling translations with Prismy

With the i18n foundation laid by Kilo Code, we plugged in Prismy to industrialize translation management:

• automatic glossary generation,
• custom AI prompts for consistent translations,
• in-PR generation and review,
• live editing via app or Chrome extension,
• business-friendly interface that requires zero developer involvement.

In short: express internationalization is now possible

• 1 specialized AI agent: Kilo Code
• 1 well-crafted prompt
• A few targeted iterations
• Result: fully i18n-ready codebase in under an hour
• Ongoing translation management powered by Prismy

---

👉 Huge kudos to the Kilo Code team for this flawless execution.

If you're still hesitant about tackling internationalization: now is the time. AI agents are ready.