I paid to try out Devin (https://devin.ai), so I wanted to write down my thoughts here as notes for myself.
What is Devin?
Devin is a web app that pulls a Git repository and runs it inside Devin, then, once you describe your requirements, has an AI edit the code and propose the changes as a pull request.
Unlike GitHub Copilot, it looks at the whole codebase, and it sets up an environment to actually run and verify the result.
Plans start at $20, and it's pay-as-you-go.
Basic Usage
Initial setup
Create an account by connecting it to GitHub.
First it asks you to pick a plan, so choose whichever fits you. Since I just wanted to try it out this time, I went ahead and bought the $20 plan. It's not a flat "unlimited for a month" deal — it seems to work more like you get a set amount of tokens to use for that amount.
Having it write code
Time to have it write some code!
Select your repository. If you want to start a new project, it goes more smoothly if you first create an empty repository on GitHub.
Once you select a repository, setup begins to build the environment on Devin's Machine.
If you type in the chat box in Japanese — "I want to do this!" or "I don't understand!" — it replies properly in Japanese.
If you pick an empty repository, make sure you create at least one commit first!
Once you've gone through the setup, it looks like you jot down a project overview and so on in Additional Notes.
Once everything's done, click the "Finish" button.
That seems to add it to a machine!
Getting a pull request from a session
Now that the repository has been loaded through the steps above, you can write your requirements in a session and have it produce a pull request!
So I wrote out a bunch of requirements...
And it generated it! Amazing!!
Thoughts
It feels like gaining an extra engineer. It does genuinely take time, so you have to wait a few minutes.
- Have it build the foundation first
- Then refine it yourself
- As things get more polished
- Hand off ownership by feature and go work on other features yourself
My takeaway is that this kind of workflow seems like the way to go!