How to Use Devin Desktop (ex-Windsurf) in 2026

Devin Desktop is Windsurf under a new name — same editor lineage, same plans carried across, different centre of gravity. Cognition shipped the rename on 2 June 2026 as an over-the-air update; windsurf.com now points at Devin’s site. If you still search “how to use Windsurf AI,” you are looking for this product.

This guide is a workflow: what the rename actually changed, free Tab + SWE-1.6, agent quotas, Cascade vs Devin Local Agent, multi-agent supervision via ACP, and when to stay on Cursor instead. Product-level judgment: Devin Desktop review (URL still /tools/windsurf/). Head-to-head: Cursor vs Windsurf. Landscape: complete AI coding guide and best AI coding tools.

Plan names, quotas and list prices move. Shapes below reflect vendor positioning and our notes as of 2026-08-05; re-open the official pricing page the day you budget.

The short answer

1. You already had Windsurf? Open the app — you are on Devin Desktop. No reinstall for the desktop path; settings and plans migrated.
2. Try Free first if you mainly want unlimited Tab and SWE-1.6; treat agent quotas as a sample, not a daily driver.
3. Pay Pro (~$20/mo) when agent tasks are part of the week; Max (~$200) only if agents run near-continuously and Pro quotas choke you.
4. Pick one local agent default (Cascade or Devin Local Agent) so the team shares muscle memory; use the Command Center for parallel jobs.
5. Review every agent diff like a PR. Multi-agent is power; unsupervised multi-agent is incident theatre.
6. Prefer Cursor if you want stability and a single polished stack more than open multi-vendor agents.

What the rename did — and did not — change

Three names in one lineage (Codeium → Windsurf → Devin Desktop) is a real stability tax. If tooling churn stresses your team, weight that honestly against the free tier and ACP story — see Cursor vs Windsurf.

Search trap

Tutorials, Stack Overflow answers and old blog posts still say Windsurf. The menu bar says Devin Desktop. Features map; vocabulary does not. When help fails, search both strings.

Install and first hour

1. Download from the official Devin Desktop / redirected Windsurf entry point for your OS — or open the existing app and accept the rename update.
2. Sign in with the account that held your Windsurf plan if you had one.
3. Open a git repo with a clean working tree, not a throwaway folder without history.
4. Spend twenty minutes on Tab only in a file you know. Learn accept / partial-accept before you spin agents.
5. Open the agent surface once: note whether you are looking at Cascade, Devin Local Agent, or a cloud/external agent in the picker. Write down which one you will use for the next week.

You are still migrating editors if you came from plain VS Code — same foundation, still a move. If JetBrains is non-negotiable, use the JetBrains listing rather than pretending the desktop rename covers it.

Free vs Pro vs Max (pricing shape)

Traps

• Free Tab is excellent; free agents are not “unlimited professional.” Judge Free as a forever autocomplete plan plus a trial of agents — not as Claude Code replacement.
• Pro’s sticker is not Max’s life. If you queue agents all day, budget for Max or a different product rather than rage-refreshing quotas.
• Teams is not “Pro × seats.” An $80 base plus seats means five developers land roughly ~$280/mo against Cursor’s ~$200 at $40/user — worked in Cursor vs Windsurf and the coding hub.
• Credits language in old posts is stale. March 2026 retired the old credit framing for daily/weekly quotas. Ignore 2025 screenshots.

If $0 forever for serious coding is the constraint, Devin Desktop’s free Tab

• SWE-1.6 is one of the better answers on the board — pair with best free AI coding tools and Cline for BYO-key agents.

Tab, Cascade, and Devin Local Agent

This is where people get lost after the rename.

Cascade vs Devin Local Agent (the confusion tax)

We previously said Cascade was retired. That was wrong — corrected after checking official docs (Cascade still has a full section). What actually changed is emphasis: a second agent ships beside it, and marketing leads with the Command Center.

Practical rule for a team:

1. Pick one local agent as the house default for two weeks.
2. Document it in the repo (AGENTS.md / team wiki): test command, “never touch secrets,” PR norms.
3. Only then experiment with the other local agent or ACP guests.

Running both without a default is how you get “it worked yesterday” folklore and no shared review culture.

Making Tab earn its keep

• Name intents in comments and identifiers first.
• Partial-accept when only the first lines are right.
• Quiet Tab in security-sensitive files when noise is costly.

Making agents earn their keep

Write tickets, not vibes:

“Expired sessions return 500 instead of redirect to /login. Add or fix a test under auth tests, change only the handler and tests, run the unit suite, stop.”

Then: read the plan, reject drive-by refactors, watch commands, review the diff.

Same supervision habits as Cursor Agent and Claude Code — product chrome differs; review discipline does not.

Agent Command Center and multi-agent work

Devin Desktop’s bet is that you will run more than one job at a time and need a kanban-shaped view of agent tasks (Spaces, boards, review-before-push style flows — exact labels follow current UI).

Supervision checklist we use

1. Git first — clean tree, feature branch, remote you can push.
2. One concern per agent — refactor or feature or docs, not all three.
3. Scope map — if a “small” ticket touches >~15 files, split.
4. Tests you run yourself — green in the agent pane is not a merge license.
5. Security pass — auth, secrets, injection, new dependencies.
6. You can explain the PR — if not, you cannot ship it.
7. Parallel only when independent — two agents on the same hot files is a merge conflict factory.

Multi-agent without git discipline multiplies the failure modes in the AI agents guide — long chains, unchecked side effects, nobody staffing the boundary.

ACP: hosting other vendors’ agents

Agent Client Protocol is why Devin Desktop is interesting beyond “another VS Code fork with AI.” The product direction is: run Codex, Claude Agent, OpenCode (and Cognition’s own) inside one editor rather than living in five terminals.

When ACP helps

• Your org already standardises on more than one model vendor.
• You want a single review surface for heterogeneous agents.
• Lock-in risk is an explicit engineering principle, not a blog slogan.

When ACP is a distraction

• You have not mastered one agent workflow yet.
• Policy forbids sending code to multiple processors.
• The team needs the simplest onboarding path (often Cursor or Copilot).

ACP is related to but not the same as MCP (Model Context Protocol — tools and data connectors). For MCP’s consent model and when to skip it, read What is MCP?. You can get value from Tab without either protocol.

Privacy, code leaving the machine, and team rollout

Default mental model: code goes to model providers for Tab and agent work, with plan-dependent retention and training posture. Read Cognition’s current security docs the day you open a private monorepo — do not rely on a 2025 blog memory about Windsurf.

Before customer code:

1. Confirm employer policy on third-party code processing.
2. Prefer team/enterprise controls when you need SSO, audit, and seat governance.
3. Keep secrets out of the tree agents can read.
4. If policy forbids cloud processing entirely, this product class is the wrong procurement track.

Team rollout pattern that avoids chaos:

1. Pilot five developers for two weeks; log quota pain and review misses.
2. Write house rules once (test command, style, “no force-push main”).
3. Standardise the default local agent and PR review bar.
4. Only then enable ACP guests or Max-tier spend.

When to pick Devin Desktop

• You want unlimited free Tab and SWE-1.6 as a daily autocomplete baseline.
• You already paid for Windsurf and need continuity, not a migration project.
• You care about multi-vendor agents in one IDE via ACP.
• You like a kanban / command-center view of parallel agent jobs.
• JetBrains support in this lineage still matters to you.

When to skip it (or re-evaluate hard)

• You want the most stable, most documented AI editor narrative → Cursor and how to use Cursor.
• You refuse to change editors → GitHub Copilot or Claude Code in place.
• You need the strongest agent-only loop we review and already buy Anthropic → how to use Claude Code.
• You need browser-only, zero local install, idea→URL → Replit or Lovable.
• Churn (three product names) is a hard no for your risk model.

Devin Desktop vs Cursor vs Copilot vs Claude Code

Head-to-heads we maintain: Cursor vs Windsurf, Cursor vs GitHub Copilot, Claude Code vs Cursor, GitHub Copilot vs Claude Code, OpenAI Codex vs Claude Code.

A one-day practice plan

Morning — Tab + Free models

• Implement a small known feature with Tab on and SWE-1.6 where it fits.
• Disable Tab for one hour; notice where you miss it.

Afternoon — single agent

• One bug with a reproduction and a test.
• One test-writing task on an untested module.
• Deliberately reject one over-scoped plan.

Late — multi-agent (only if morning was clean)

• Two independent chores on different directories.
• Merge nothing you cannot explain.

End of day

• Log: quota remaining, review minutes, one almost-merged mistake, whether Cascade or Local Agent felt clearer.
• Decide Free / Pro / leave for Cursor based on that note, not a keynote.

Settings and habits that reduce regret

• Keep git status visible at all times.
• Write the second correction as a project rule, not a third chat scold.
• Prefer short agent chains with a human at irreversible steps — same thesis as the agents guide.
• Budget Max deliberately; do not slide into it from ignored quotas.
• Search documentation under both “Windsurf” and “Devin Desktop” until the web catches up.

The short version

1. Windsurf → Devin Desktop (June 2026); plans and settings carried; strategy shifted toward agent orchestration.
2. Free unlimited Tab + SWE-1.6 is the genuine free-tier story; agents are quota-gated.
3. Cascade is not dead; Devin Local Agent sits beside it — pick a default.
4. ACP is the differentiator vs Cursor’s closed stack.
5. Supervision is the real cost of multi-agent; git + PR review are mandatory.
6. Cursor still wins for many teams on polish and team seat math.

Where to go next

• Devin Desktop (Windsurf) review — product verdict
• Cursor vs Windsurf — open agents vs polished stack
• How to use Cursor AI · How to use Claude Code
• Complete AI coding guide · Best AI coding tools
• Best free AI coding tools · What is MCP?