Cognition has been steadily expanding what Devin can do since its initial debut as a cloud-based autonomous software engineer. The cloud version runs in its own virtual machine, handles long-horizon tasks, and submits pull requests while you're doing something else entirely. Now, the company has taken a different angle: a local agent that lives in your terminal, works with your files, and responds interactively as you code.
Devin for Terminal is a local coding agent that runs directly in your terminal, working with your local files and environment to give you fast, interactive assistance right where you code. It's a distinct product from the cloud Devin, designed for a different class of workflow.
The move puts Cognition in direct competition with Anthropic's Claude Code and OpenAI's Codex CLI, both of which have staked out the terminal-first AI coding space. The question is whether Devin's name recognition and cloud integration give it enough differentiation to matter here.
What Is Devin for Terminal?
Devin for Terminal and Devin are separate tools designed for different workflows. That distinction is worth understanding before you install anything.
Devin is the cloud-based AI software engineer that runs in a virtual machine, including features like Playbooks, Secrets, Knowledge, and other capabilities not available in Devin for Terminal. The terminal version trades those cloud-side features for local speed and interactivity.
Devin for Terminal can implement new features, fix bugs, review code, answer questions, automate tasks, and more. That's a broad mandate for a CLI tool, but the framing is familiar: you're in your project directory, you type devin, and the agent picks up context from your local files.
How It Works
Getting started is intentionally fast. You can get up and running in 2 minutes with Devin for Terminal, a local command-line coding agent with deep Devin Cloud integration.
Installation on macOS and Linux is a single curl command. The CLI command is devin, installed via curl -fsSL https://cli.devin.ai/install.sh | bash on macOS and Linux. Windows users have a PowerShell path, though Cognition recommends using the WSL install if possible.
After you restart your terminal, enter a project directory and type devin to activate Devin for Terminal. You can also preload the session with a prompt for automation, for example: devin -- check out this code and suggest a feasible, helpful feature.
The agent reads your local files and environment directly. Devin for Terminal is a local coding agent that runs directly in your terminal and works with your local files and environment. Inference, however, is handled in the cloud, so you still need a network connection and a valid Devin account.
