Devin
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What is Devin?
Devin is an autonomous software engineering agent from Cognition that runs in its own cloud environment, planning and carrying out long coding tasks in the background.
An autonomous, cloud-based software engineering agent designed to plan, execute, and resolve complex, long-running coding tasks entirely in the background.
Devin operates in its own sandboxed cloud environment with a built-in browser, code editor, and terminal. Rather than just assisting a developer inline, Devin acts as a standalone worker. It can read API documentation, debug difficult infrastructure issues, and submit completed pull requests while the human developer focuses elsewhere.
How it relates to Orbit
Orbit runs coding agents on your own machines rather than in a hosted cloud workspace, and every run passes an approval gate. See Agent Sessions & Harnesses for details.
When you would use it
You deploy Devin (or integrate it via tools like Windsurf) when you want to fully delegate an isolated, time-consuming software engineering task to an autonomous cloud worker.
Common operations
- Handing off an entire Jira ticket for background resolution.
- Delegating the tedious migration of an outdated codebase framework.
Frequently asked questions
How is Devin different from Claude Code?
Devin works in a hosted cloud workspace. Claude Code runs in your own terminal or IDE against your local repository.
Does Orbit run agents in the cloud like Devin?
No. Orbit runs coding agents on your own machines, and every run passes an approval gate first. See Approval & Review.