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Decision brief

Devin Desktop (formerly Windsurf) Review: What to Settle Before a Team Rollout

Choose Devin Desktop to run several coding agents from one editor, and settle agent permissions, seats, and SSO before the rollout.

Reading time
3 min read
Sources
21 cited
In this piece
Devin Desktop (formerly Windsurf)+17 Mixed

GILD verdict

Choose Devin Desktop if your team will switch editors to run Cognition's agents, third-party agents, and Devin cloud sessions from one place.

Budget for Enterprise if you need SSO, and set agent permission rules before usage grows.

Devin Desktop (formerly Windsurf)

AI Coding Agent by Cognition

+17 Mixed
Product page

Fit and limits

Who it fits

  • Engineers will work in a VS Code-derived editor. VS Code and Cursor settings import during onboarding or from the command palette.
  • You want to run Devin Local next to third-party agents over ACP, such as Codex CLI, Claude Agent, or Gemini CLI, and track every session on one board.
  • You plan to delegate longer tasks to Devin cloud sessions, which self-serve plans fund from the same quota as local agent work.
  • Admins want to enforce agent behavior centrally: allow, ask, and deny rules, MCP and model allowlists, and sandbox mode on Enterprise.
  • Token spend per task matters to you. On a 14-file refactor, Maksim Danilchenko measured about 18,000 tokens for Devin Local against 24,000 for Cascade, in line with Cognition's claim of up to 30% better efficiency.

Where it falls short

  • SSO and role-based access are Enterprise features. New Teams plans no longer include SSO.
  • Cascade was removed on Sep 8, 2026: Devin Local is the only built-in agent, and Quick Review works with it.
  • The Windsurf JetBrains plugin is in maintenance mode, and Cognition points JetBrains users to Devin over ACP instead.
  • Teams flex seats do not include Devin Desktop, so every editor user needs a US$40 full seat.
  • Devin Local is a new agent with new habits. Danilchenko warns reviewers not to assume it ran the tests after a refactor.

Implementation reality

  1. Plan for the rename

    The application is now named Devin (Devin.app on macOS, Devin.exe on Windows), so device-management policies that approve only Windsurf can flag or block it. Settings, extensions, and legacy .windsurf rule paths carry over, and new .devin paths take precedence.

  2. Choose the agent and its permissions

    New tabs default to Devin Local, which replaces Cascade's auto-execution levels with allow, ask, and deny rules and asks before every MCP tool call by default. On Enterprise plans an admin must turn Devin Local on, and can force sandbox mode with organization-wide domain rules.

  3. Put a ceiling on spend

    Self-serve plans include a daily and weekly quota drawn down per token at each model's rate, and extra usage is billed at API list prices. On Teams, on-demand credits are shared across members, and admins set auto-reload thresholds and default session spending limits. Newer Enterprise contracts are billed in ACUs.

  4. Decide on data-retention models

    Some Anthropic and OpenAI models require the provider to retain data for up to 30 days for trust and safety checks, and Teams and Enterprise admins choose whether to allow them. Web search is off by default for Enterprise teams.

  5. Pick the Quick Review model

    Quick Review offers SWE-check, Cognition's own review model, free on every plan. Cognition reports that SWE-check matches Claude Opus 4.6 on its in-distribution bug evals and trails it on out-of-distribution ones. GPT 5.5 and Opus 4.7 reviews draw quota per token, and Enterprise admins can limit which review models engineers see.

  6. Watch cloud sessions in the quota

    Devin cloud sessions started from the editor draw on the same shared quota and extra usage balance as local agent work. Every user can see a session's usage in Session Insights.

What to measure in your pilot

  • GILD found one hands-on token count and no team-level data on Devin Local; compare reviewed changes merged per day of quota in the first month against your last Windsurf month.
  • Cognition's usage pages show per-session usage but no split between local and cloud work; tag cloud sessions for a month and cap them if they take most of a seat's quota.
  • GILD found no independent score for Quick Review; log which SWE-check findings reviewers act on for a month, and move risky repositories to a frontier review model if most are dismissed.

Sources

Official documentation
20
Public source
1
  1. Devin DesktopOfficial documentationdevin.ai
  2. Devin Desktop docs: FAQ on the move from WindsurfOfficial documentationdocs.devin.ai
  3. Devin docs: Self-serve plansOfficial documentationdocs.devin.ai
  4. Devin Desktop docs: Quota-based usageOfficial documentationdocs.devin.ai
  5. Devin Desktop docs: Plans and usageOfficial documentationdocs.devin.ai
  6. Devin Desktop docs: InstallOfficial documentationdocs.devin.ai
  7. Devin Desktop docs: Welcome to Devin DesktopOfficial documentationdocs.devin.ai
  8. Devin Desktop docs: Devin Local agentOfficial documentationdocs.devin.ai
  9. Devin Desktop docs: Cascade overviewOfficial documentationdocs.devin.ai
  10. Devin Desktop docs: TerminalOfficial documentationdocs.devin.ai
  11. Devin Desktop docs: Agent Client ProtocolOfficial documentationdocs.devin.ai
  12. Devin Desktop docs: Agent Command CenterOfficial documentationdocs.devin.ai
  13. Devin Desktop docs: Devin in Devin DesktopOfficial documentationdocs.devin.ai
  14. Devin Desktop docs: Quick ReviewOfficial documentationdocs.devin.ai
  15. Devin Desktop docs: Context awarenessOfficial documentationdocs.devin.ai
  16. Devin Desktop docs: Admin controls referenceOfficial documentationdocs.devin.ai
  17. Devin Desktop docs: SSO and SCIMOfficial documentationdocs.devin.ai
  18. Devin Desktop docs: Role-based accessOfficial documentationdocs.devin.ai
  19. Maksim Danilchenko: Devin Desktop (ex-Windsurf): Features, Pricing, What Changed (Jun 6, 2026)Public sourcedanilchenko.dev
  20. Cognition: Introducing SWE-Check: 10x Faster Bug Detection (Apr 14, 2026)Official documentationcognition.com
  21. Devin docs: UsageOfficial documentationdocs.devin.ai

Keep reading

  1. Buyer guideDevin Desktop Workflow Playbook: Rules, Permissions, and Review for Agent WorkSet committed rules, permission scopes, task size, and verification so Devin Local changes arrive tested and spend stays visible.
  2. Buyer guideMoving a Team from Windsurf to Devin DesktopDevice-management approval for the renamed app, the Devin Local home for each Cascade memory, workflow, and command list, and a new path for JetBrains users.
  3. Buyer guideDevin Desktop Permissions & Data Controls ChecklistSeven checks for security or compliance teams that must approve the editor before a team rollout, each tied to the plan that offers it.
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