Cognition, the startup behind Viral AI programming tool Devin, has introduced a new, low-cost plan to encourage sign-ups.
When Cognition released Devin last year, the tool quickly exploded on social media due to its ability to autonomously perform certain software development tasks. However, it soon became clear that Devin was struggling with more complicated coding tasks. Nevertheless, the tool has attracted praise from AI founders, including Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas, who effectively raised a cognitive profile.
Devin is generally available to teams at an eye-catching price of $500 per month. Thursday – notable weeks after the company reportedly raised hundreds of millions of dollars with fresh capital – recognition introduced an entry-level option that costs $20, then moved to a pay-as-you-go plan.
Pay-as-you-go planning can be very expensive depending on how you use Devin. The first $20 nets about 9 Acus, a cognitive term for calculating credits. (ACUS costs $2.25 for $20, while hiking from $2 for $2 is costly on a $500 monthly subscription.) Acceptance states that a 15-minute “active Devin work” equals about 1 ACU. 9 Only Acus will only net 2.25 hours of work. By that metric – not so much if you’re dealing with a huge codebase.
However, perceptions claim that today’s Devin (Devin 2.0) has improved significantly compared to its December release. Similar to Github’s Copilot Tool, Devin can now generate plans for coding projects, answer questions about the code for quotes, and create “Wikis” of code with documentation.
Silas Alberti, a member of Devin’s development team, told TechCrunch that the tool “gets twice as much work as it previously.”
These claims are best taken with a single grain of salt. Research finds that even today’s best code generation AI tends to introduce security vulnerabilities and bugs due to weaknesses in areas such as the ability to understand programming logic. One of Devin’s recent reviews found that only three of the 20 tasks completed successfully.