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Devin Local is our next-generation agent harness shared with Devin CLI. It operates on your machine with access to your local files, tools, and environment and is the primary local agent for Devin Desktop.
Previously using Cascade? Run the Devin: Open Cascade Migration Wizard command from the command palette to bring your workflows and memories over in one guided flow.

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Key improvements

In the time since Cascade first launched, model capabilities have evolved significantly. Devin Local is built from the ground up to efficiently leverage these advancements.

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Token efficiency

The Devin Local agent is significantly more token-efficient, with a greater focus on prompt caching. Most tasks take up to 30% fewer tokens than Cascade to accomplish the same result.

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Subagents

The Devin Local agent can spawn independent subagents to handle subtasks — either in the foreground or background. Subagents share tools and codebase context with the parent agent but operate in their own conversation chain. Subagents are controlled by the Subagents (Preview) toggle in Devin Settings. Beyond the built-in profiles, you can define your own subagents as markdown files under agents/ using either layout:
  • Flat file — agents/<name>.md, where the file name becomes the profile’s identifier.
  • Directory — agents/<name>/AGENT.md, where the directory name becomes the profile’s identifier.
See the subagents documentation for where these directories are discovered and how to configure a profile.

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Sandboxing

The Devin Local agent supports OS-level sandboxing. When enabled, the sandbox enforces:
  • Filesystem isolation — writable paths are derived from your permission scopes, and Read(...) deny rules hide paths from sandboxed commands
  • Network filtering — domain allowlists and denylists control what the agent can reach
Enterprise admins can enforce sandbox behavior across the organization through team settings, including requiring sandbox mode for all users and configuring organization-wide domain filtering rules.

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Quick Review

Quick Review is a dedicated subagent available with the Devin Local agent to get rapid feedback on changes.

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Switching your agent

New tabs start with Devin Local when you haven’t chosen a preferred agent (falling back to Cascade if Devin Local isn’t available to you). You can change the agent for new conversations at any time via the agent selector in the bottom right corner of Devin Desktop — Devin Local is selectable even while it is still connecting.

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Agent settings

If Devin Local doesn’t appear in the agent selector, you might need to enable it from Devin Settings:
  1. Open the Command Palette with Cmd+Shift+P (macOS) or Ctrl+Shift+P (Windows/Linux)
  2. Open Devin User Settings
  3. Click the “Agents” tab
  4. Toggle the “Devin Local” agent on
  5. Restart Devin Desktop
You can also choose to disable Cascade entirely with the devin.cascade.enabled setting.

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Enterprise admins

Devin Local is a bundled agent that Devin Desktop fetches from the server. Whether it appears in the agent selector is controlled by the Devin Local Agent team setting:
  • On Team and other non-enterprise plans it is available by default (unless an individual member has this access disabled).
  • On Enterprise plans it is gated, so an admin must turn it on for members.
Enterprise admins manage this from the team settings dashboard:
  • Devin Enterprise admins — Settings → Enterprise → Windsurf (app.devin.ai/org/{orgName}/settings/windsurf). Under Features, enable Devin Local Agent (“Allow members to use the Devin Local agent in Devin Desktop and delegate tasks to Devin’s terminal agent via ACP”).
  • Windsurf Enterprise admins — the Windsurf dashboard.
Once enabled, Devin Local appears in the agent selector for all members after they restart Devin Desktop — no per-user setup or custom ACP registry config is required.

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Modes

Devin Local has its own modes, separate from Cascade’s modes. Because it shares the agent harness with Devin CLI, it uses the same agent modes (Normal, Plan, and Ask) and the same permission modes. See essential commands for the full mode set and the slash commands that switch between them.

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Plan mode

Plan mode is read-only research: the agent investigates your codebase, writes up an approach, and asks for your approval before implementing anything. The plan is written to a persistent Markdown file at ~/.devin/plans/plan-<session>.md, so you can edit it, come back to it later, or hand it to a fresh session.
Include the keyword megaplan (ultraplan and masterplan also work) in your prompt to switch the session into Plan mode and have the agent plan much more thoroughly — it asks at least one clarifying question before writing the plan.

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Worktree sessions

You can run a Devin Local session inside a git worktree, so the agent can edit, build, and test without touching your main workspace. Pick the location from the agent location selector when starting a session:
  • New worktree — Devin Desktop creates a fresh worktree for the session.
  • Existing worktree — choose one you already have from the selector’s Local submenu.
Once the agent is done, click Merge on the session to bring the worktree’s changes back into your workspace.
Worktrees are shared with Cascade sessions, including their on-disk location and cleanup behavior — see worktrees.

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Customizations

The customizations surface lists everything a Devin Local session has loaded — rules, skills, hooks, MCP servers, and plugins — along with what your repository, organization, and account offer. You can open it with Open customizations from the new-tab menu in an agent space, or from the right-click menu on a Devin Local session in the agent sidebar.
Plugins here means Devin agent plugins: installable bundles that contribute skills, rules, hooks, MCP servers, and subagents to the agent. See plugins.They are unrelated to Windsurf Plugins, which bring Devin to JetBrains, VS Code, and other editors, or to the editor extensions you install inside Devin Desktop — both of those extend the IDE rather than the agent.

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Restricted Mode

When a workspace is open in Restricted Mode, agents are unavailable in it: Cascade, Devin Local, and every ACP agent are disabled, and hooks neither load nor run. Agents become available again once the workspace is no longer in Restricted Mode.

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Differences

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Permissions model

Devin Local replaces auto-execution levels with a more fine-grained permissions system to control which actions the agent can take:
  • Deny rules block actions entirely (highest priority)
  • Ask rules always prompt for approval
  • Allow rules auto-approve actions without prompting
Permissions can be scoped to file reads, file writes, command execution, HTTP fetches, and MCP tools. They can be configured at the project, user, or organization level. See permissions for the rule syntax. Permission rules written with globs (for example Read(**/*.pem)) match against every workspace directory in the session, including directories added after it started.

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Responding to permission requests

When the agent asks for approval, the request card offers a few ways to answer:
  • Edit the command — click the command in the card to change it before approving. The wand action lets you describe the change you want in plain language and has a fast model rewrite the command for you to review.
  • Keyboard shortcuts — approve, always-allow, or reject a request without reaching for the mouse. The shortcut hints are shown on the buttons and dropdown entries.
  • Session-wide grants — an approval you grant for the session applies to every later request in that session, so the root agent and its subagents don’t re-prompt for a scope you already granted.

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MCP permissions

Unlike Cascade, the default configuration of the Devin Local agent prompts for approval before calling any MCP tool. When the agent wants to invoke an MCP tool, you can allow the specific tool or every tool on that MCP server, either for the current session or permanently.
Enterprise admins can default-allow specific MCP servers or tools so that trusted integrations don’t prompt every time. See tool-based permissions for how to configure these rules.

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MCP re-authentication

When a server’s stored OAuth credentials expire, it shows a Needs auth state in the Devin Local MCP list, on its marketplace card, and on the server detail page. Click Authenticate to clear the stored credentials and re-run the browser authorization flow.

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MCP server configuration

With the Devin Local agent, MCP servers are configured via config files on your local machine. The file location is determined by the scope:

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Skills

Skills are reusable, model-invoked bundles of instructions (and optional scripts) that extend what the Devin Local agent can do. Because Devin Local shares the same agent harness as Devin CLI, it uses the same skills format and discovery mechanism. Skills are also the recommended way to migrate Cascade memories and workflows, which aren’t supported by the Devin Local agent (see Limitations) — capture a repeatable procedure once and the agent invokes it automatically when relevant. See the Devin CLI skills documentation for details on how to create, configure, and scope skills.

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Limitations

The gap runs both ways: plugins and subagents have no Cascade equivalent at all, and recent releases brought plan mode and merging worktree sessions to parity with Cascade. The list below covers the Cascade features this agent does not have yet. The following features are not currently supported with the Devin Local agent:
  • Memories — The Devin Local agent does not persist memories between sessions. Migrate your critical memories to skills with the Devin: Open Cascade Migration Wizard command.
  • Workflows — Workflows are not available with the Devin Local agent. Migrate your workflows to skills with the Devin: Open Cascade Migration Wizard command.
  • Code Lenses - Currently code lenses do not yet trigger the Devin Local agent.
  • App Deploys - The Devin Local agent does not support app deploys.
  • Conversation Sharing - Conversation sharing is not yet available with the Devin Local agent.
The Devin Local agent does support rules and AGENTS.md files as well as skills for providing persistent context and reusable workflows.

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Analytics

Devin Local activity is reported in the cascade_runs data source (model usage, messages sent, and credit consumption), the cascade_tool_usage data source (per-tool call counts such as Code Edit, Run Command, Search Web, and MCP Tool), the cascade_lines data source (daily lines of code written by the agent), and the Cascade Data source of the Custom Analytics API. Unlike Cascade, Devin Local does not track specific suggested lines or “modes” when operating: an edit only runs after you approve it, so accepted lines equal suggested lines, and the mode field in cascade_runs is not populated. The Devin CLI does not report analytics for hybrid deployments.

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Enterprise controls

Enterprise admins can configure the Devin Local agent through team settings, including new controls only available with the Devin Local agent:
  • Sandbox enforcement - Require sandbox mode for all users and configure organization-wide domain filtering rules
  • Granular permissions - Control which actions the agent can take with more fine-grained permissions
  • Network enforcement - Control network access with allowed and denied domains
Additionally, the “Enable Cascade” control can be used to disable the legacy Cascade agent entirely to ensure your team follows the new controls available with Devin CLI.

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Unsupported enterprise controls

The following legacy enterprise controls are not available with the Devin Local agent:
  • Restrict Tool Calls to Workspace - by default, the Devin Local agent can only read/edit files within the workspace. Custom permissions are a more flexible replacement that can be used to replicate the same rules.
  • App Deploys - App deploys are not yet supported with the Devin Local agent.
  • Conversation Sharing - Conversation sharing is not yet supported with the Devin Local agent.
  • Global tool calling disabled - If you previously disabled tool calling entirely, write an equivalent permission policy for Devin CLI instead.
The following legacy controls will still be enforced as a fallback if you haven’t yet implemented an enterprise CLI permission config:
  • Auto Run Terminal Commands - The Devin Local agent uses its own permissions model instead of auto-execution levels; we recommend using this instead, but the old control will still be enforced as a fallback.
  • Terminal allow lists - Implement an equivalent permission policy for Devin CLI to allow specific terminal commands.
  • Terminal deny lists - Implement an equivalent permission policy for Devin CLI to deny specific terminal commands.

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Further reading