Windsurf

From PRIMO.ai
Jump to navigation Jump to search

YouTube ... Quora ...Google search ...Google News ...Bing News


Windsurf is the AI-native code editor that Codeium launched in November 2024 as "the first agentic IDE," and the name the company itself adopted in April 2025. Built as a fork of Visual Studio Code, it paired fast AI autocomplete with Cascade, an agent that could understand a whole codebase, edit many files, run terminal commands, and keep track of what the developer was doing. After a dramatic week in July 2025, when an expected $3 billion sale to OpenAI collapsed and Google hired the founders in a $2.4 billion licensing deal, the agent startup Cognition, maker of the autonomous coding agent Devin, acquired the rest of Windsurf. Under Cognition the editor gained in-house SWE models, Codemaps, cloud agents, and an Agent Command Center, and on June 2, 2026 it was renamed Devin Desktop, with windsurf.com now redirecting to devin.ai. For context, see the AI Coding Agent Comparison, Other Coding options, and Agents/Assistants.

Windsurf matters because its short history maps almost exactly onto the shift in AI coding from autocomplete to agents. Think of it as a cockpit that kept adding autopilots: first suggestions for the next line, then an agent that flew whole maneuvers under the pilot's eye, and finally a control tower for directing several agents at once, local and in the cloud. Before the acquisition Windsurf reported $82 million in annual recurring revenue, more than 350 enterprise customers, and hundreds of thousands of daily active users, and Cognition's combined run-rate revenue later passed $1 billion in September 2026. The product also became a case study in the risks of the AI tools market, from model access being cut off by a supplier to founders leaving in a licensing deal and a beloved brand being retired.


Windsurf shows that in AI coding the editor is turning into a control tower: the scarce skill is no longer typing code but directing, checking, and trusting the agents that write it.


History and Company

The company began in 2021 as Exafunction, a GPU virtualization and deep learning infrastructure startup founded by Varun Mohan and Douglas Chen, who had met in middle school and later studied together at MIT. In 2022 the founders pivoted to AI coding and launched Codeium, a free AI autocomplete and chat extension for dozens of editors that became one of the best-known alternatives to GitHub Copilot and was later renamed Windsurf Plugins. Codeium trained its own code models and built enterprise features early, including self-hosted deployments and FedRAMP High authorization, which won it customers in regulated industries and government. On November 13, 2024, it released the Windsurf Editor, and Mohan later said the editor reached more than one million developers within about four months.

Windsurf shipped features in rapid numbered "Waves," adding Cascade memories and rules, Model Context Protocol (MCP) tool support, in-editor previews, one-click app deploys, and Windsurf Tab predictions between December 2024 and spring 2025. On April 4, 2025, Codeium renamed itself Windsurf, and in May 2025 it released its first in-house frontier coding models, the SWE-1 family. That spring OpenAI reached an agreement to buy Windsurf for about $3 billion, and in early June Anthropic cut Windsurf's direct access to its Claude 3.x models with less than five days' notice, pushing users toward bring-your-own-key access or other models. The OpenAI deal stalled over Microsoft's rights to OpenAI's intellectual property, and its exclusivity period expired on July 11, 2025.

That same day Google agreed to pay about $2.4 billion for a non-exclusive license to Windsurf's technology and to hire Mohan, Chen, and a group of researchers into Google DeepMind, leaving former head of business Jeff Wang as interim CEO. Three days later, on July 14, 2025, Cognition signed a definitive agreement to acquire Windsurf's remaining company, including its IP, product, brand, commercial business, and team, with vesting accelerated for all employees. The deal drew wide debate about founders leaving staff behind, and within weeks Cognition laid off about 30 Windsurf employees and offered buyouts to others. Google later launched Google Antigravity, an agent-first IDE built by the team that had joined from Windsurf, in November 2025.

Under Cognition, Windsurf became the local half of a combined product line with Devin, the cloud agent. Cognition shipped the SWE-grep context models and the SWE-1.5 agent model in October 2025, Windsurf 2.0 with the Agent Command Center and built-in Devin in April 2026, and finally renamed Windsurf to Devin Desktop on June 2, 2026, retiring Cascade in favor of a new agent called Devin Local. Jeff Wang, who led Windsurf through the transition, became a president at Cognition, and Cognition raised more than $1 billion at a $26 billion valuation in May 2026 and more than $2 billion at a $48 billion valuation in September 2026. The Windsurf name survives mainly in legacy enterprise logins, file paths, and the Windsurf for JetBrains plugin.

How Windsurf Works

Windsurf, and now Devin Desktop, runs as a full desktop IDE built on the open-source code behind Visual Studio Code, so it supports familiar extensions, keybindings, language servers, and terminals. Around that editor it layers two kinds of AI help. Passive help comes from Tab, which predicts the next edit, cursor jump, or import as the developer types, and from inline edit commands. Active help comes from an agent panel, first Cascade and now Devin Local, that takes a natural language request, plans, searches the codebase, edits files, runs commands, and reports back for review.

The agent's usefulness depends on context, which is where much of Windsurf's engineering went. The editor indexes the repository, tracks the developer's recent actions, and retrieves relevant code using its own models, including the SWE-grep models behind the Fast Context subagent that Cognition trained with reinforcement learning for fast, parallel code search. Project rules files (including .windsurfrules, .devin/rules/, and AGENTS.md), saved memories, reusable workflows, and MCP connections to outside tools give the agent standing instructions and access to systems such as issue trackers and databases. Developers can choose among frontier large language models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and others, or Cognition's own SWE models, which are tuned for speed and cost inside this specific agent harness.

Since Windsurf 2.0, the product has also become a place to manage many agents. The Agent Command Center shows local and cloud sessions on a Kanban board organized by status, Spaces group the sessions, pull requests, files, and context for a task, and one click can hand a plan from the local agent to Devin Cloud, which keeps working on its own virtual machine after the laptop closes. Through the open Agent Client Protocol (ACP), Devin Desktop can also run third-party agents such as OpenAI's Codex, Anthropic's Claude Agent, and OpenCode side by side with Devin. Review closes the loop: Quick Review and Devin Review check changes for bugs before they are pushed or merged, keeping a human in the loop for final decisions.

Windsurf Offerings

Windsurf has been both a company and a product line, and since July 2025 its offerings have been folded into Cognition's Devin family. The subsections below describe each major offering, noting where it came from and what it is called today. Because names changed often in 2025 and 2026, readers may see the same feature described as a Windsurf, Cascade, or Devin capability in different sources.

Windsurf Editor and Devin Desktop

The Windsurf Editor was the company's flagship product from November 2024 to June 2026: a standalone, AI-native IDE for macOS, Windows, and Linux that combined Tab, Cascade, previews, and deploys in one window. On June 2, 2026, Cognition shipped it to existing users as Devin Desktop through an ordinary over-the-air update, keeping plans, pricing, extensions, settings, and in-progress work, and replacing the surf terminal command with devin-desktop. The Agent Command Center became the default view, while the classic editor remains one click away for manual edits. An October 23, 2026 refresh rebuilt the Agent Window to match the Devin web app, adding sessions, Automations, Review, and Wiki views and letting developers tile several local or cloud sessions side by side.

Cascade and Devin Local

Cascade was Windsurf's signature agent, introduced with the editor in 2024 and described by the company as combining deep codebase understanding, tool use, and awareness of the developer's actions. Over 2025 it gained memories, rules, planning mode, named checkpoints, voice input, parallel sessions, Git worktree support, and hooks. With the Devin Desktop launch, Cognition introduced Devin Local as its successor, rewritten from scratch in Rust, up to 30% more token efficient, able to use subagents, and sharing its architecture with the Devin CLI. Cognition initially said the legacy Cascade agent would remain available through July 1, 2026 for migration, and the Devin Desktop changelog records its removal on September 8, 2026.

Windsurf Tab and Inline Editing

Windsurf Tab grew out of Codeium's original autocomplete into a unified prediction system that can suggest multi-line edits, jump the cursor to the next place that needs a change, and add missing imports. It draws on context from open files, the terminal, the clipboard, and the agent conversation, and a second version arrived in February 2026. Unlimited Tab completions and inline edits are included even in the free plan, which has long been one of Windsurf's main attractions for students and hobbyists. These passive features remain part of Devin Desktop alongside the agent tools.

SWE Models

Windsurf and Cognition have trained a family of coding models, labeled SWE for software engineering, so that the product is not wholly dependent on outside model providers. The SWE-1 family arrived in May 2025, SWE-1.5 followed on October 29, 2025 and was served by Cerebras at up to about 950 tokens per second, and SWE-1.6 became generally available on April 7, 2026 with a focus on smoother "model UX." SWE-1.7 launched on July 8, 2026, post-trained from Moonshot AI's open-weight Kimi K2.7 base, and SWE-2 arrived on September 10, 2026, post-trained from the larger Kimi K3 base, offering selectable effort levels and, according to Cognition, scoring 50.0% on its FrontierCode 1.1 Main benchmark within one point of Claude Fable 5.1 at 64% lower cost. Cognition says SWE-2 runs inside Devin products rather than as a standalone API, and it also powers a multi-model mode called Fusion, in which it works as a fast partner to a larger lead model.

Codemaps, Fast Context, and DeepWiki

Fast Context, launched in October 2025, is a subagent powered by SWE-grep and SWE-grep-mini that runs many parallel searches to surface relevant files roughly an order of magnitude faster than a frontier model doing the same search. Codemaps, announced in November 2025, generate AI-annotated, structured maps of how a piece of code works, using either a fast SWE model or a smarter frontier model, so developers can understand unfamiliar code before asking an agent to change it. Cognition also brought DeepWiki, its tool that turns repositories into browsable documentation, into the IDE in August 2025. Together these features reflect Cognition's argument that understanding code is becoming as important as generating it, especially as agents produce more of it.

Devin Cloud, Spaces, and the Agent Command Center

Windsurf 2.0, released on April 15, 2026, added the Agent Command Center, Spaces, and Devin in Windsurf, calling it the biggest Windsurf launch yet. Devin is Cognition's autonomous cloud agent, which runs on its own virtual machine with a desktop, browser, and computer use, so it can debug, test, and deploy long after the developer's laptop is closed. A typical flow is to refine a plan with the local agent, delegate it to Devin with one click, and then review the resulting pull request inside the IDE or hand it back to a local agent for touch-ups. Cognition said at launch that Devin was included with every Windsurf plan, though Devin Cloud access rolled out gradually, and current pricing lists Devin Cloud access from the Pro plan up.

Devin Review and Quick Review

On May 6, 2026, Cognition brought Devin Review, its pull request reviewer, into Windsurf, along with Quick Review, a free local bug check powered by a specialized model called SWE-check. Cognition says Quick Review is up to ten times faster than a deep review agent while preserving accuracy, and positions it as a check to run before pushing, with Devin Review used for deeper analysis once a pull request is ready. Devin Review groups related changes, explains findings, and offers a path from findings to fixes through Devin. Enterprise customers need a Cognition platform agreement to use Devin Review.

Windsurf Plugins and JetBrains

Codeium's original extensions, renamed Windsurf Plugins in 2025, brought autocomplete and chat to many third-party editors, and Windsurf for JetBrains later added Cascade to JetBrains IDEs such as IntelliJ IDEA and PyCharm. After the Devin Desktop launch, Cognition placed the Windsurf JetBrains plugin in maintenance mode and recommends using Devin through ACP instead. Developers who live in JetBrains tools should therefore expect fewer updates to the old plugin. This shift reflects Cognition's broader preference for one agent that works across surfaces rather than separate assistants for each editor.

Enterprise and Government

Enterprise and public sector customers were central to Windsurf's business from its Codeium days, and Cognition has continued that focus. Windsurf advertises FedRAMP High authorization and SOC 2 Type II compliance, reported being ready for IL6 defense workloads in October 2025, and Cognition later launched an offering called Cognition for Government. Enterprise plans add SAML or OIDC single sign-on, centralized admin controls, team isolation, and deployment inside a customer's own virtual private cloud. Legacy Windsurf Enterprise customers kept their existing contracts and login paths after the rename, and newer enterprise customers buy through the Cognition platform.

Summary of Offerings

The table below summarizes Windsurf's main offerings and their status as of November 2026. Names are given in both their Windsurf and Devin forms where they changed. Availability depends on plan and is changing quickly, so readers should check Cognition's documentation for current details.

Offering What it does Status in November 2026
Windsurf Editor, now Devin Desktop AI-native IDE built on Visual Studio Code with an Agent Command Center as the default view Renamed June 2, 2026; free download
Cascade, now Devin Local Local coding agent that plans, edits files, runs commands, and uses subagents Cascade removed September 2026; Devin Local is the only built-in local agent
Windsurf Tab and inline edits Next-edit predictions, cursor jumps, imports, and inline changes Unlimited on all plans
SWE models (SWE-1.5 to SWE-2) Cognition's in-house coding models tuned for its agent harness SWE-2 released September 10, 2026; included on Pro and above
Fast Context and SWE-grep Fast, parallel code search subagent Built into the local agent
Codemaps and DeepWiki AI-annotated code maps and repository documentation Available in the IDE
Agent Command Center and Spaces Kanban management of local, cloud, and third-party agents grouped by task Default view since June 2026
Devin Cloud Autonomous agent on its own virtual machine for long-running tasks Included with paid plans, subject to quotas
Devin Review and Quick Review Deep pull request review and fast local bug detection with SWE-check Quick Review free; Devin Review on self-serve plans and by agreement for Enterprise
ACP agent support Runs Codex, Claude Agent, OpenCode, and other ACP-compatible agents inside Devin Desktop Available since June 2026
Windsurf for JetBrains Agent and completions inside JetBrains IDEs Maintenance mode; Devin over ACP recommended
Enterprise and government SSO, admin controls, VPC deployment, FedRAMP High, and SOC 2 Type II Custom contracts through Cognition


Getting Started: Build a Small Python App with Devin Desktop

The quickest way to see what Windsurf has become is to build a small project with the local agent and then review its work. The example below creates a command-line habit tracker in Python, takes about 30 minutes, and works on the free plan, although handing work to Devin Cloud at the end requires a paid plan. Existing Windsurf users already have Devin Desktop through the automatic update, and menu names may shift as Cognition updates the app. You need Python 3.11 or later and Git installed on your computer.

The first part sets up the project and gives the agent standing rules. Rules files keep the agent consistent across sessions and are the simplest form of guardrail. Devin Desktop reads AGENTS.md as well as older Windsurf rules files.

  1. Install. Download Devin Desktop from devin.ai/download, install it, and sign in with a free Devin account or, for GPT model usage, an eligible ChatGPT plan.
  2. Open a folder. Create an empty folder called habit-tracker, open it in Devin Desktop, and run git init in the built-in terminal.
  3. Add rules. Create a file named AGENTS.md in the folder and paste the rules from the first block below.
  4. Start a session. In the Agent Command Center, create a Space for the project, start a Devin Local session, and paste the build prompt from the second block below.
# AGENTS.md
## Project rules
- Use Python 3.11+ and the standard library only, except pytest for tests.
- Keep functions small, add type hints, and write a short docstring for each.
- Never delete files or run commands outside this folder without asking.
- Run "pytest -q" after every change and report the result.

Build a small command-line habit tracker in Python. Users can add a habit,
mark it done for today, and list habits with their current streak. Store
data in a local JSON file named habits.json. Write pytest tests for the
streak calculation, including a missed day. Show me a short plan first and
wait for my approval before editing any files.

The second part reviews and verifies the agent's work, which is where most of the value of an agentic IDE is won or lost. Treat the agent like a fast junior colleague whose work you check before it is merged. Keep approvals turned on for terminal commands until you trust the setup.

  1. Approve the plan. Read the plan, ask for changes if needed, and approve it; the agent then creates files and runs tests, asking before risky commands.
  2. Review the diff. Open each changed file in the editor, accept or reject edits, and run python -m pytest -q yourself.
  3. Map the code. Open Codemaps and ask how a streak is calculated, then compare the map with the code to confirm you understand it.
  4. Check and commit. Run Quick Review on your changes, fix any findings, and commit with Git.

On a paid plan, a good next step is to hand a follow-up task to Devin Cloud, for example: "Add a report command that prints a weekly summary table, update the README, and open a pull request with passing tests." You can then watch the cloud session on the Kanban board, review the pull request with Devin Review, and merge it only when you are satisfied. Before using agents on real projects, keep secrets out of prompts and rules files, limit which repositories the agent can reach, and remember that web pages, issues, and dependencies the agent reads can carry a prompt injection.

Why This Matters

Windsurf is a compact history of the AI coding boom. Codeium's free autocomplete showed that small teams with their own models could compete with GitHub Copilot, the Windsurf Editor helped popularize the agentic IDE and "vibe coding" alongside Cursor, and the July 2025 bidding war showed how strategically valuable coding tools had become to OpenAI, Google, and others. Under Cognition, the product then followed the market's next turn, from one developer pairing with one agent to engineers supervising fleets of local and cloud agents. For anyone tracking the AI industry, few products illustrate so many of its forces at once.

For developers, Windsurf's trajectory highlights what now differentiates AI coding tools. Raw model quality is increasingly shared, since most tools offer models from Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google, so the competition has moved to context retrieval, agent harnesses, in-house models tuned for speed and cost, review and verification, and orchestration of many agents. Cognition's bet is that one agent, Devin, should follow the developer across the IDE, terminal, cloud, and code review, and that openness to third-party agents through ACP will make Devin Desktop a neutral "Switzerland of AI." Readers comparing options can use the AI Coding Agent Comparison, the Ready-to-Use AI Agent Comparison, and the AI Agent Environment Selector.

The story also carries warnings. Windsurf users experienced a supplier cutting off a popular model, founders departing in a licensing deal, layoffs, a disputed pricing overhaul, the retirement of the Cascade agent many had learned, and finally the loss of the Windsurf name, all within about a year. Organizations adopting agentic tools should plan for vendor change, keep their code and rules portable, and treat agent output as untrusted until reviewed, with attention to security, privacy, and governance when agents can run commands and open pull requests on their own.

Recent Developments

Between 2025 and late 2026, Windsurf went from a fast-growing independent startup to the foundation of Cognition's Devin Desktop. The changes touched ownership, models, pricing, and the basic design of the product, which moved from a single agent to a command center for many. Most announcements appeared on the Windsurf, Cognition, and Devin blogs and in the Devin Desktop changelog. The most significant developments were:

  • Rename and SWE-1 (April to May 2025): Codeium renamed itself Windsurf on April 4, 2025, and released its first in-house frontier coding models, the SWE-1 family, in May.
  • Anthropic Access Cut and OpenAI Deal (May to June 2025): OpenAI reached an agreement to buy Windsurf for about $3 billion, and Anthropic then cut Windsurf's direct access to Claude 3.x models with less than five days' notice in early June.
  • Google Deal and Cognition Acquisition (July 2025): After the OpenAI exclusivity period expired on July 11, Google licensed Windsurf's technology and hired its founders for about $2.4 billion, and on July 14 Cognition agreed to acquire the rest of Windsurf, which then had $82 million in annual recurring revenue.
  • SWE-grep, SWE-1.5, and Codemaps (October to November 2025): Cognition released the SWE-grep models for Fast Context on October 16, the fast SWE-1.5 agent model on October 29, and Codemaps in early November.
  • Pricing Overhaul (March 2026): On March 19, Windsurf replaced prompt credits with daily and weekly quotas, raised Pro to $20 and Teams to $40 per seat, and launched the $200 Max plan.
  • SWE-1.6 and Windsurf 2.0 (April 2026): SWE-1.6 became generally available on April 7, and Windsurf 2.0 introduced the Agent Command Center, Spaces, and built-in Devin on April 15.
  • Devin Review in the IDE and Series D (May 2026): Devin Review and Quick Review arrived in Windsurf on May 6, and on May 27 Cognition announced more than $1 billion in new funding at a $26 billion valuation, citing a $492 million revenue run rate.
  • Devin Desktop (June to July 2026): Windsurf was renamed Devin Desktop on June 2 with Devin Local, ACP support for third-party agents, and the Agent Command Center as the default view, and SWE-1.7 followed on July 8.
  • Series E, SWE-2, and Fusion (September 2026): Cognition raised more than $2 billion at a $48 billion valuation on September 8, removed the legacy Cascade agent the same day, and on September 10 released SWE-2 and brought Fusion to Devin Desktop, later reporting that its run-rate revenue had passed $1 billion.
  • ChatGPT Sign-In and Refreshed App (September to October 2026): Devin Desktop added sign-in with ChatGPT on September 29 so eligible ChatGPT plans can pay for GPT model usage, and an October 23 refresh rebuilt the Agent Window to match the Devin web app.
  • Debates Over Ownership, Pricing, and Models: Supporters argue that Cognition turned a struggling, leaderless startup into a stronger product by combining Windsurf's IDE and enterprise customers with Devin's cloud agent and its own fast models. Critics point to the founders' 2025 exit, the March 2026 price increase, the retirement of Cascade and the Windsurf brand, and the JetBrains plugin's move to maintenance mode, and some long-time users say the agent-first interface made the editor harder to use. Others note that Cognition's choice to post-train SWE-1.7 and SWE-2 from Moonshot AI's open-weight Kimi models made model provenance part of the discussion, and that headline benchmark results such as FrontierCode come from Cognition's own evaluations.

Additional Viewing

Load video
YouTube

This is the official launch video for the Windsurf Editor from November 2024, in which the company introduced what it called the world's first agentic IDE. The video and its description present the idea behind Cascade, which gave the AI a combination of deep codebase understanding, tools, and awareness of what the developer is doing. It is a useful baseline for seeing how far the product changed after the Cognition acquisition.

Load video
YouTube

In this May 2025 episode of The Pragmatic Engineer, Gergely Orosz talks with co-founder and CEO Varun Mohan about the technical work behind Windsurf. Topics include how the team evaluates new models, why it forked VS Code and built a JetBrains plugin, how it indexes large codebases and manages latency, and what FedRAMP compliance involves. It is one of the most detailed public explanations of Windsurf's architecture before the 2025 deals.

Load video
YouTube

In this Y Combinator conversation with Garry Tan, recorded in spring 2025, Mohan describes how the team pivoted from GPU virtualization to AI coding over a single weekend and why he believes evaluations compound while competitive insights depreciate. He also discusses vibe coding, how many non-developers use Windsurf, and where agentic coding was heading. It captures the company's thinking at the height of its independent growth.

Load video
YouTube

This official Cognition video introduces Windsurf 2.0, the April 2026 release that added the Agent Command Center, a Kanban view of every local and cloud agent, and built Devin directly into the editor. It shows how a developer can plan locally, delegate to a cloud agent, and review the result in one place. It is the clearest picture of the transition from single-agent IDE to agent command center.

Load video
YouTube

This independent walkthrough from Helpfolder covers the June 2026 rebrand of Windsurf to Devin Desktop, including the new Devin Local agent and other features introduced with the rename. It is helpful for existing Windsurf users who want to see what moved and what stayed the same. Because Devin Desktop changes frequently, viewers should check the official changelog for later updates such as the October 2026 interface refresh.

References

Retrieved from "https://primo.ai/w/index.php?title=Windsurf&oldid=52604"