Devin Desktop is Cognition's next-generation IDE — built on the Windsurf foundation, but rebuilt from the ground up around what Cognition calls the Agent Command Center. It is designed for engineers who manage agents, not just code alongside one. This guide covers Devin Desktop's full capability set and explains how AnyCap extends it with media generation for every agent in your workspace.
What Is Devin Desktop?
Devin Desktop is Cognition's answer to a question that's becoming more common in serious engineering teams: How do you manage multiple AI agents working in parallel on different parts of a codebase?
It evolved from Windsurf — the AI-powered IDE Cognition acquired — and integrates Devin (Cognition's autonomous AI software engineer) directly into the IDE surface. The core idea: instead of pair-programming with one AI at a time, Devin Desktop is designed for agent management at scale.
Cognition described the shift directly at launch: "The best engineers we work with are not just pair-programming with one agent at a time. They are using agents to scope and plan work, delegating tasks to cloud agents, reviewing progress, and deciding what makes it to production."
Devin Desktop was built for that world.
Core Devin Desktop Capabilities
Agent Command Center
The Agent Command Center is the defining feature of Devin Desktop. It puts agent management front and center — not as a sidebar or modal, but as the primary surface you work from.
From the Command Center you can:
- View all running agents (local and cloud) in a single Kanban board
- Track agent progress, output, and status in real time
- Assign tasks, code context, and requirements to specific agents
- Review and merge agent-produced pull requests
- Switch between agents without losing context or state
For teams running multiple agents in parallel, this is a qualitative shift from juggling separate browser tabs or terminal sessions.
Spaces: Shared Context for Agent Teams
Spaces is Devin Desktop's solution to multi-agent coordination. When multiple agents work on related tasks, they often need to share code, decisions, or intermediate results. Without coordination, they duplicate effort or produce conflicting outputs.
Spaces gives related agents a shared context layer — so agents can build on each other's work rather than starting from scratch or contradicting each other.
Typical setup: one agent scopes a new feature, a second implements the backend, a third writes tests, a fourth handles the frontend. Spaces keeps all four synchronized and contextually aware of the others' progress.
Multi-Agent Kanban View
The Kanban view in Devin Desktop makes parallel agent work visible and manageable at a glance. Each task card shows:
- Which agent owns the task
- Current status (in progress, blocked, waiting for review)
- A preview of recent output
- Time elapsed
This kind of visibility is what makes the difference between effectively running three agents in parallel and just hoping they produce compatible results.
ACP Protocol: Open to Third-Party Agents
Devin Desktop supports the Agent Client Protocol (ACP), which means it is not limited to Devin agents. Any ACP-compatible agent can run inside Devin Desktop alongside Devin — sharing the same Kanban view, Spaces context, and review workflow.
In practice, this means teams can plug in specialized agents for different parts of the development lifecycle: testing agents, security review agents, documentation agents, and — with AnyCap — media generation agents.
Full IDE Compatibility
Devin Desktop is built on the Windsurf/VS Code foundation, preserving full compatibility with your existing setup:
- All VS Code extensions continue to work
- Keybindings are preserved exactly
- LSPs, terminals, and Git integrations function normally
- No migration from your current editor workflows required
The agent management layer sits on top of the IDE you already know, not instead of it.
Multi-Model Architecture
Devin is designed to use the best model for each task, rather than being tied to a single underlying model. This is reflected in the architecture: Devin Desktop is model-agnostic at the agent level, routing to different AI models depending on the complexity and nature of each task.
The Gap: No Media Generation
Devin Desktop covers the software development side well. What's missing is media. Agents can't generate images, UI mockups, or any kind of visual asset. No video demos, no audio, no CDN publishing. There's no built-in mechanism for real-time web access either.
For teams who only need agents to write and ship code, this isn't an issue. But most products eventually need a hero image, a demo clip, or a batch of social graphics — and right now, an agent has to stop and hand that task back to a human.
Connecting AnyCap
AnyCap is an agent CLI that adds image generation, video production, audio synthesis, web search, and file publishing to Devin Desktop agents. Devin Desktop agents run shell commands as part of their tasks — once AnyCap is installed and authenticated on the system, every agent in your workspace can invoke it directly.
Agent commands return local file paths and CDN URLs, so generated media fits directly into chained workflows. An agent building a feature can generate a hero image, get back the CDN URL, and reference it in the PR description or pass it to another agent via Spaces — no human step in between.
Image Generation
Generate product mockups, hero images, UI asset sets, social media graphics, and illustrations from any agent session. AnyCap supports 15+ image models — FLUX Pro, Ideogram, Stable Diffusion XL, Recraft, and more — so your agents can select the right style for each task.
Video Production
Generate product demo videos, short-form social clips, animation previews, and explainer content using Veo 3, Kling, Runway, Wan, and other leading video models. An agent building a landing page can generate the hero video in the same session it writes the code.
Audio and Music
Generate voiceovers, background music, sound effects, and audio assets for apps, videos, or content projects. AnyCap supports both speech synthesis and music generation models.
Web Search and Crawl
Give agents real-time web access. Devin Desktop agents can search the live web, crawl competitor pages, read up-to-date documentation, and act on fresh data without manual information gathering.
File Publishing
Upload generated assets to cloud storage and receive shareable CDN links instantly. Agents can reference AnyCap-hosted files in code, pass them to other agents via Spaces, or surface them in pull request descriptions.
Setting Up AnyCap in Devin Desktop
Step 1: Install the AnyCap CLI
npm install -g anycap
anycap login
That's the full setup. Devin Desktop agents run shell commands — once AnyCap is installed and authenticated on the system, every agent in your workspace can invoke it.
Step 2: Verify it works
Open any agent session and type:
"Use AnyCap to generate a test image: a simple gradient square."
The agent runs anycap image generate via shell and returns a file path and CDN URL. Every agent in your Devin Desktop workspace now has full media capabilities.
Example Workflows
A Devin agent building a landing page can write the HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, generate the hero image, produce a 10-second demo video, and open a PR with everything included — no human handoff between code and assets.
For marketing content: an agent reads your changelog, generates a LinkedIn carousel image set, writes the copy, and delivers a publish-ready package. For QA documentation: an agent generates annotated screenshots of key user flows, writes the docs, and links them in your wiki.
For client work, agents can generate polished mockups and a brief explainer video from a project brief, giving you something to send before the feature is built.
Devin Desktop at a Glance
| Feature | Detail |
|---|---|
| Base IDE | Windsurf (VS Code compatible) |
| Primary AI model | Devin (Cognition SWE-1 series) |
| Multi-model routing | Yes — best model per task |
| Protocol support | MCP + ACP |
| Agent visibility | Kanban view, real-time status |
| Third-party agents | Any ACP-compatible agent |
| Download | devin.ai/download |
| AnyCap integration | CLI tool, install once |
Get Started
Devin Desktop is available for download from Cognition. AnyCap connects in five minutes and requires no custom code.