Devin's four surfaces: Cloud, Desktop, CLI, and editor integrations

The single most common source of confusion about Devin is that people talk about it as one thing. It is four, and they are documented separately because they do different work in different places.

Devin Cloud

The hosted agent at app.devin.ai. Devin runs inside a virtual machine that Cognition operates, boots from a snapshot of your configured environment, and works through a task while you watch or walk away.

Cloud is where the orchestration features live — Skills, Secrets, and Devin Review, plus Playbooks and Knowledge, which Cognition is moving into Skills. It has two documented modes: Ask, a lightweight mode for exploring a codebase and building a plan without changing code, and Agent, the full autonomous mode.

Devin Desktop

The IDE. This is what used to be called Windsurf; Cognition rebranded it Devin Desktop on 2 June 2026. It ships an agent manager built in, including an Agent Command Center with a Kanban view and “Spaces” for shared context.

It remains backwards-compatible with Windsurf and VS Code extensions, keybindings, and language servers — which matters if you are evaluating a switch and have an editor configuration you do not want to rebuild.

Devin CLI

A local command-line agent that runs in your terminal against your local files, tools, and environment, with integration back into Devin Cloud. It is the surface to reach for when the work is local and you would rather stay in a shell than an IDE.

Editor integrations through ACP

If you would rather not move editors, the current route is the Agent Client Protocol (ACP), an open standard that lets an editor run an outside agent in its own agent panel. Devin’s docs cover running Devin this way inside JetBrains IDEs, Zed, and Xcode. In Zed and Xcode the editor launches the Devin CLI’s devin acp command, so you get the same agent you would get in the terminal. JetBrains IDEs can install Devin from their ACP registry with no CLI setup.

The older Windsurf JetBrains plugin is documented as being in maintenance mode, and its Remote Development plugin is no longer maintained. Devin’s docs recommend switching to Devin over ACP instead. If you are setting something up today, start with ACP.

Update, 31 October 2026: this section previously listed the Windsurf plugins (JetBrains, VS Code, Visual Studio, Vim, NeoVim, Jupyter, and Chrome) as the main way to use Devin in other editors. Cognition now points to ACP instead, and documents the JetBrains plugin as in maintenance mode.

The part that actually changed: Cascade and Devin Local

This is where most out-of-date advice goes wrong, so it is worth being precise.

Cascade was Devin Desktop’s original local agent — Code and Chat modes, tool calling, voice input, checkpoints, linter integration, and a default limit of 40 tool calls per prompt.

Devin Local is its replacement. Cognition describes it as the “next-generation agent harness shared with Devin CLI.” Its launch post says it was rewritten from scratch in Rust, is up to 30% more token-efficient, and supports newer capabilities such as subagents.

Two consequences follow, and they are the reason this section exists:

1. Devin Local and the Devin CLI are the same harness. The Devin Local docs describe it as an “agent harness shared with Devin CLI.” They are two front doors onto one engine, not two independent agents.
2. Cascade is now the legacy option. When Cognition renamed Windsurf, it said Cascade would remain available “through July 1st” 2026 for gradual migration. As of October 2026 the docs still describe “the legacy Cascade agent,” which an admin can turn off. Devin Desktop no longer starts new Cascade conversations or reopens old ones, so any tutorial that treats Cascade as the main local agent is out of date: plan around Devin Local.

Devin Local itself is no longer labeled preview in the docs. One of its features, subagents, still is.

Which one should you use?

• Evaluating Devin at all, or delegating a multi-step task you do not want to babysit → Cloud
• You want an IDE with the agent built in → Desktop
• You live in a terminal → CLI
• You are not willing to leave your current editor → ACP (JetBrains, Zed, or Xcode)

References

1. Devin Local — docs.devin.ai
2. Cascade — docs.devin.ai
3. Devin CLI — docs.devin.ai
4. Windsurf is now Devin Desktop — devin.ai
5. Windsurf Plugins: getting started — docs.devin.ai
6. Devin in JetBrains IDEs (ACP) — docs.devin.ai
7. Devin in Zed (ACP) — docs.devin.ai
8. Devin in Xcode (ACP) — docs.devin.ai

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