Journey of Devin: The Autonomous AI Engineer

Scott Wu is the co-founder and CEO of Cognition, the company behind Devin—the world’s first autonomous AI software engineer. Unlike other AI coding tools, Devin works like an autonomous engineer that you can interact with through Slack, Linear, and GitHub, just like with a remote engineer. With Scott’s background in competitive programming and a previous AI-powered startup, Lunchclub, teaching AI to code has become his ultimate passion.What you’ll learn:

1. How a team of “Devins” are already producing 25% of Cognition’s pull requests, and they are on track to hit 50% by year’s end

2. How each engineer on Cognition’s 15-person engineering team works with about five Devins each

3. How Devin has evolved from a “high school CS student” to a “junior engineer” over the past year

4. Why engineering will shift from “bricklayers” to “architects”

5. Why AI tools will lead to more engineering jobs rather than fewer

6. How Devin creates its own wiki to understand and document complex codebases

7. The eight pivots Cognition went through before landing on their current approach

8. The cultural shifts required to successfully adopt AI engineers

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Where to find Scott Wu:

• X: https://x.com/scottwu46

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-wu-8b94ab96/

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Where to find Lenny:

• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com

• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/

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In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Introduction to Scott Wu and Devin

(09:13) Scaling and future prospects

(10:23) Devin's origin story

(17:26) The idea of Devin as a person

(22:19) How a team of “Devins” are already producing 25% of Cognition’s pull requests

(25:17) Important skills in the AI era

(30:21) How Cognition’s engineering team works with Devin's

(34:37) Live demo

(42:20) Devin’s codebase integration

(44:50) Automation with Linear

(46:53) What Devin does best

(52:56) The future of AI in software engineering

(57:13) Moats and stickiness in AI

(01:01:57) The tech that enables Devin

(01:04:14) AI will be the biggest technology shift of our lives

(01:07:25) Adopting Devin in your company

(01:15:13) Startup wisdom and hiring practices

(01:22:32) Lightning round and final thoughts

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Referenced:

• Devin: https://devin.ai/

• GitHub: https://github.com/

• Linear: https://linear.app/

• Waymo: https://waymo.com/

• GitHub Copilot: https://github.com/features/copilot

• Cursor: https://www.cursor.com/

• Anysphere: https://anysphere.inc/

• Bolt: https://bolt.new/

• StackBlitz: https://stackblitz.com/

• Cognition: https://cognition.ai/

• v0: https://v0.dev/

• Vercel: https://vercel.com/

• Everyone’s an engineer now: Inside v0’s mission to create a hundred million builders | Guillermo Rauch (founder and CEO of Vercel, creators of v0 and Next.js): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/everyones-an-engineer-now-guillermo-rauch

• Inside Bolt: From near-death to ~$40m ARR in 5 months—one of the fastest-growing products in history | Eric Simons (founder and CEO of StackBlitz): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/inside-bolt-eric-simons

• Assembly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assembly_language

• Pascal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal_(programming_language)

• Python: https://www.python.org/

• Jevons paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

• Datadog: https://www.datadoghq.com/

• Bending the universe in your favor | Claire Vo (LaunchDarkly, Color, Optimizely, ChatPRD): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/bending-the-universe-in-your-favor

• OpenAI’s CPO on how AI changes must-have skills, moats, coding, startup playbooks, more | Kevin Weil (CPO at OpenAI, ex-Instagram, Twitter): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/kevin-weil-open-ai

• Behind the product: Replit | Amjad Masad (co-founder and CEO): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/behind-the-product-replit-amjad-masad

• Windsurf: https://windsurf.com/

• COBOL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COBOL

• Fortran: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortran

• Magic the Gathering: https://magic.wizards.com/en

• Aura frames: https://auraframes.com/

• AirPods: https://www.apple.com/airpods/

• Steven Hao on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steven-hao-160b9638/

• Walden Yan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/waldenyan/

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Recommended books:

• How to Win Friends & Influence People: https://www.amazon.com/How-Win-Friends-Influence-People/dp/0671027034

• The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future: https://www.amazon.com/Power-Law-Venture-Capital-Making/dp/052555999X

• The Great Gatsby: https://www.amazon.com/Great-Gatsby-F-Scott-Fitzgerald/dp/0743273567

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Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.

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Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.

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