Devin (Cognition)
Devin's onboarding puts repository setup before the first task. Users index a repo and configure Devin's environment, then start from a 'What do you want to get done?' box with a repo selector. The team tells new users to treat Devin like a new junior engineer.
Notes
- CEO Scott Wu says early users "see the blank screen and not really know" what to do, or asked for a whole-codebase re-architecture. Cognition changed the onboarding to steer people to "let's work on getting the repository set up first" and to give Devin "a couple one pointer tasks so it can get familiar with the code base" (Lenny's Podcast, 2025-05-04, ~17:44).
- Wu's one-line onboarding framing: "treat Devin like your new junior engineer". Start with this week's easier tickets, learn what Devin needs to test its own code, then scale up (Lenny's Podcast, ~1:09:31).
- Devin's docs make indexing a repository and configuring the environment prerequisites before the first session (docs.devin.ai, first run).
Patterns
setup before first taskrepo selector on homemental-model framing (junior engineer)
Articles
- Inside Devin: The AI engineer that's set to write 50% of its company's code this year | Scott WuLenny's Podcast (YouTube)by the team
- Devin Docs: first runDevin Docsby the team