Test Devin on integrations, migration and security review
Answer.AI had Devin attempt 20 real tasks spanning integrations, migration, and security reviews, handing off via Slack, monitoring the environment, and falling back to Cursor to salvage failures. Results: 14 failures, 3 successes, 3 inconclusive — mostly hallucinated features and overcomplicated code. Task: The Answer.AI team tested Devin, an autonomous AI software engineer, against 20 real-world tasks including API integrations, code migration, and security reviews. They initiated tasks via Slack, monitored Devin's Docker-based environment, and provided credentials when requested. Human developers intervened to salvage failures, often switching to Cursor for step-by-step implementation when Devin produced unusable or overly complex code.; tools: Devin, Cursor. Human role: The original post does not say how a person stayed involved.; limitations: Devin struggles with tasks requiring deep context understanding or internal tooling knowledge, often failing to recognize impossible constraints. It tends to overcomplicate simple solutions and lacks the ability to predict success, making it unreliable for autonomous execution. Human oversight is critical, as salvaging Devin's failed attempts consumed significant developer time. The tool is currently better suited for well-defined, small tasks rather than complex, ambiguous engineering problems..
Tools
Published on Agent Work Atlas:
Overview
Answer.AI had Devin attempt 20 real tasks spanning integrations, migration, and security reviews, handing off via Slack, monitoring the environment, and falling back to Cursor to salvage failures. Results: 14 failures, 3 successes, 3 inconclusive — mostly hallucinated features and overcomplicated code.
Workflow
The Answer.AI team tested Devin, an autonomous AI software engineer, against 20 real-world tasks including API integrations, code migration, and security reviews. They initiated tasks via Slack, monitored Devin's Docker-based environment, and provided credentials when requested. Human developers intervened to salvage failures, often switching to Cursor for step-by-step implementation when Devin produced unusable or overly complex code.
Reported result
The testing resulted in 14 failures, 3 successes, and 3 inconclusive outcomes. Early successes included a Notion-to-Google Sheets integration and a planet tracker, but scaling up revealed significant issues. Devin frequently got stuck in technical dead-ends, hallucinated non-existent features (e.g., Railway multi-app deployment), and produced 'spaghetti code' that required more time to fix than writing from scratch.
Human role
The original post does not say how a person stayed involved.
Limitations
Devin struggles with tasks requiring deep context understanding or internal tooling knowledge, often failing to recognize impossible constraints. It tends to overcomplicate simple solutions and lacks the ability to predict success, making it unreliable for autonomous execution. Human oversight is critical, as salvaging Devin's failed attempts consumed significant developer time. The tool is currently better suited for well-defined, small tasks rather than complex, ambiguous engineering problems.
Try it
I am a developer at [Company Name] evaluating AI coding agents. I need you to test Devin on a specific task: [Describe Task, e.g., 'Integrate API X with Service Y']. 1. **Setup**: Ensure I have access to Devin via Slack and a test environment. 2. **Execution**: Send the task prompt to Devin. Monitor its progress in the web interface. 3. **Intervention**: If Devin asks for credentials, provide them. If it stalls or produces complex/unusable code, stop the process. 4. **Fallback**: If Devin fails, switch to Cursor. Use Cursor to implement the solution step-by-step, referencing Devin's failed attempts only for context on what *not* to do. 5. **Review**: Compare the time spent on Devin vs. Cursor. **Constraints**: Do not let Devin run for more than [Time Limit, e.g., 2 hours] without human check-in. Do not deploy any code generated by Devin without manual security review. **Output**: Provide a report detailing: - Task success/failure status. - Time spent on Devin vs. manual/Cursor fix. - Specific errors or hallucinations encountered. - Recommendation on whether to use Devin for this type of task in the future. **Missing Inputs**: If the task description is ambiguous, ask me for clarification before starting. If Devin access is unavailable, simulate the workflow using Cursor only and note the limitation.
Source reports are not independently verified. Publication date is the catalog publication date, not the original article date.