Devin is not the first AI-powered coding assistant, but it promises to be the smartest. Devin stands out from the rest because it doesn’t just provide coding suggestions or autocomplete tasks.Rather, it can take on and complete an entire software project independently.
To put Devin to work, users need to provide a job prompt. For example, a prompt could be “Create a website that maps all the Italian restaurants in Sydney.” Once the prompt is given, Devin takes over and starts searching for the restaurants, gathering their addresses and contact information. After that, it builds and publishes a site that displays all the information. Devin transparently shows all the tasks it’s performing throughout the process. It also finds and fixes any bugs on its own while testing the written code.
So far, access to Devin has been limited, and only a few people have it. Those who have tried it say that Devin’s coding performance is exceptional and surpasses even the most advanced LLMs currently available, such as GPT-4 and Gemini. Early users have reported that they could create entire websites and simple games in just 5-10 minutes using Devin.
In a test, Devin was able to solve 13.86% of open issues on Github, which is significantly higher than the performance of other AI-powered assistants such as Anthropic’s Claude (4.8%) and GPT-4 (1.8%).
Cognition AI’s investors include PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, who has invested $22 million in the company. The company’s founders, Scott Wu (CEO), Steven Hao (CTO), and Walden Yan (CPO), have been competing in international coding competitions since their teenage years, winning 10 gold medals at top international coding competitions.