Windsurf is an agentic code editor: a VS Code based editor whose agent understands your project, plans the work and edits several files for you, showing every change before applying it. It was created by Codeium, bought by Cognition (the company behind the Devin agent) and, on 2 June 2026, renamed Devin Desktop; its local agent Cascade reached end of life on 1 July 2026 and was replaced by Devin Local. In this guide you will see what Windsurf is and why it changed name, how the agentic flow works today, how to install it, how it differs from Cursor and how much it costs. The same explanation is available in Spanish.

Key takeaways

  • Windsurf is an AI editor born from Codeium in November 2024: a VS Code fork that carries a built-in coding agent, not a plain autocomplete.
  • Its defining feature was Cascade, an agent that read the whole project, laid out a plan and edited several files and ran commands, with up to 20 tool calls per instruction.
  • In July 2025 Google hired its founders for $2.4 billion and, days later, Cognition (the company behind Devin) took over the product, the brand and the roughly 250-person team.
  • On 2 June 2026 Windsurf was renamed Devin Desktop as an automatic update; Cascade reached end of life on 1 July 2026 and was replaced by Devin Local (rewritten in Rust, up to 30% more token-efficient), alongside the in-house SWE model family (now up to SWE-1.7).
  • The Pro plan costs $20 a month, the same price as Cursor; there is a free plan, a Max plan at $200 and team plans.

What is Windsurf and why is it now called Devin Desktop?

Windsurf is an AI development environment that builds a coding agent into the editor itself. Codeium launched it in November 2024 and it caught on so fast that, in April 2025, the company took the name of its flagship product and became Windsurf. Technically it is a fork of Visual Studio Code, so you keep your shortcuts, your extensions and your theme, but with an agent stitched into the experience rather than bolted on as an add-on.

What came next was one of the most talked-about episodes in the sector. In July 2025, OpenAI had tried to buy Windsurf and the deal collapsed; on 11 July, Google DeepMind hired chief executive Varun Mohan, co-founder Douglas Chen and part of the research team in a licensing deal valued at $2.4 billion. Three days later, on 14 July, Cognition[1] (the company that created the autonomous agent Devin) bought what remained: the intellectual property, the product, the brand and around 250 people. Scott Wu, its chief executive, summed it up like this: "What an insane weekend, from the first call on Friday afternoon to a signed agreement on Monday morning."

With Windsurf now under Cognition, on 2 June 2026 the product was renamed Devin Desktop and shipped as an automatic update that migrated your settings and extensions. It is the same editor under another name: if you search for "Windsurf", the official site now takes you to the Devin Desktop page. In this guide we use "Windsurf" because it is the name most people know it by, but keep in mind that the current brand is Devin Desktop.

The agentic flow: from Cascade to Devin Local

Cascade was the agent that set Windsurf apart from a plain autocomplete. You opened it with Cmd/Ctrl+L and gave it a task in natural language; from there it understood the context of your code, proposed a plan and carried it out step by step. According to the official documentation, it worked with "a specialised planning agent that refines the long-term plan while your selected model focuses on short-term actions". That split between planning and acting is what kept the agent from derailing on long tasks, and it remains the design principle behind its successor.

Cascade reached end of life on 1 July 2026. It has been replaced by Devin Local, rewritten from scratch in Rust: according to Cognition it is up to 30% more token-efficient and adds subagent support, while keeping compatibility with the settings and features you already had in Cascade, including Code mode (creating and modifying code directly) and Chat mode (asking about the project and approving changes before they apply). The agent can chain up to 20 tool calls per instruction: searching the code, running terminal commands, querying the web or using external servers thanks to the Model Context Protocol. It also creates automatic to-do lists for complex operations and saves named checkpoints, so you can revert the project to an earlier state if something goes wrong.

Underneath the local agent sit the inline autocomplete (the Tab feature, which suggests code as you type and is unlimited on every plan) and the Agent Command Center, a Kanban panel to govern several local and cloud agents at once. Its "Spaces" feature groups the sessions, pull requests, files and context of a given task, so Devin Local and third-party agents connected through the open ACP protocol (Codex, Claude Agent, OpenCode) can share that same context instead of rebuilding it for every session. That idea of coordinating a fleet of agents is the direction Cognition is taking the product after the merger with Devin.

Installation and first steps

Windsurf, today Devin Desktop, is downloaded from its official website for Windows, macOS and Linux. Installation is like any desktop app and, when you open it for the first time, a wizard lets you choose the theme, import your VS Code or Cursor shortcuts and, if you want to use it from the terminal, tick the option to install the devin-desktop command (it is off by default, so check it before finishing the wizard).

Then you log in with your account or an API key and the editor is ready. If you enabled the terminal command, you can open a project directly with the binary the app installed:

devin-desktop ~/projects/my-app

With the editor open, the recommended flow for a real task is simple: press Cmd/Ctrl+L to open the local agent, describe what you want in Chat mode to agree on the approach and, once the plan convinces you, let Code mode carry it out while you review each change. It is the same discipline other coding agents such as Cline apply: think first, act later.

Windsurf versus Cursor

Windsurf and Cursor are the two most-compared agentic editors, and it is no accident: both are VS Code forks with a built-in agent and a $20-a-month Pro plan. The difference is in the details. Cursor is a very polished product, with a carefully crafted chat and predictive-editing experience and a huge community. Windsurf bet from the start on the agent "understanding" the whole project before touching anything, with an interface many find cleaner for someone coming from VS Code.

After the Cognition purchase, Windsurf’s card to play is its integration with Devin: the "Agent Command Center" to coordinate several agents, the open ACP protocol (Agent Client Protocol) to connect third-party agents such as Codex, Claude Agent or OpenCode inside the same panel, and its own SWE models, which run without spending quota. If you prefer an open tool that does not tie you to a specific editor, the natural alternative is not Cursor but an open-source agent like Continue or Cline itself. The choice depends on whether you value Cursor’s maturity, Windsurf’s fleet-of-agents vision or the transparency of open source.

Price and models

In March 2026 Windsurf reworked its pricing and replaced the old credit system with daily and weekly quotas that refresh on their own; the June rebrand to Devin Desktop left those prices untouched. There are five tiers: a free plan with unlimited Tab and a limited quota of local-agent actions; Pro at $20 a month with access to premium models; Max at $200 a month for anyone who exhausts Pro daily; Teams from $80 a month plus $40 per user; and Enterprise with custom pricing. The Pro plan matches Cursor’s price, so Windsurf’s old price advantage is gone and today the difference lies in the features.

As for models, the agent works with third-party frontier models (from Anthropic, OpenAI and Google, among others) and with the house’s own models, the SWE family. SWE-1 arrived in May 2025 as the first coding model trained by the team; today the range includes SWE-1.5, SWE-1.6 and, since 8 July 2026, SWE-1.7, built on a Kimi K2.7 base and described by Cognition as "the most capable model we’ve trained so far". The "SWE-1.6 Fast" variant was announced as "the fastest coding model in the world", with unlimited access. The advantage of these in-house models is that they do not consume your quota, so you can lean on them for day-to-day work and save the frontier models for the hardest tasks.

Frequently asked questions

Does Windsurf still exist or did it disappear?

It still exists, but under another name. The editor that was called Windsurf is today Devin Desktop, owned by Cognition since July 2025 and renamed on 2 June 2026. The windsurf.com site now redirects to the Devin Desktop page, and the update that renamed the product automatically migrated users’ settings and extensions. What did change is the local agent: Cascade reached end of life on 1 July 2026 and was replaced by Devin Local, though the Tab autocomplete and the SWE models carry over.

What is the difference between Windsurf and Cursor?

Both are VS Code based editors with a built-in agent and a $20-a-month Pro plan. Cursor stands out for a very polished experience and a large community; Windsurf bets on its local agent (formerly Cascade, now Devin Local), on its SWE models (which do not spend quota) and, after the Cognition purchase, on coordinating several agents with the Agent Command Center. The choice depends on whether you prefer Cursor’s maturity or Windsurf’s fleet-of-agents vision.

Is Windsurf free to use?

It has a free plan with unlimited Tab autocomplete and a limited monthly quota of local-agent actions, enough to try it out. For serious use the $20-a-month Pro plan is the way to go, unlocking premium models and higher quotas. Because its SWE models do not consume quota, you can stretch even the cheaper plans quite far if you lean on them.

Conclusion

Windsurf showed that an editor with an agent stitched into the experience, rather than bolted on as an add-on, could compete head to head with Cursor. Today, as Devin Desktop, its local agent plans before acting, edits several files with your approval and coordinates tools through MCP, all inside an editor you already know if you come from VS Code. Its story also leaves a lesson about how fast this sector moves: in a little over a year it went from Codeium to Windsurf, from Windsurf to Devin Desktop under Cognition, and from Cascade to Devin Local. The natural next step is to download it, try a real task and compare it with Cursor or with an open-source agent like Cline to decide which fits your way of working best.

Sources: [1] Devin Desktop, official product page[2], [2] Devin Desktop documentation, formerly Windsurf[3], [3] "Windsurf is now Devin Desktop", official Devin announcement[4], [4] "SWE-1.7: Frontier Intelligence at a Fraction of the Cost", Cognition[5], [5] Cognition buys Windsurf, TechCrunch[1], [6] Codeium, original creator of Windsurf[6].

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Sources

  1. Cognition
  2. Devin Desktop, official product page
  3. Devin Desktop documentation, formerly Windsurf
  4. "Windsurf is now Devin Desktop", official Devin announcement
  5. "SWE-1.7: Frontier Intelligence at a Fraction of the Cost", Cognition
  6. Codeium, original creator of Windsurf

Route: AI Coding Agents