# Run Devin CLI with your team in AQ > How AQ runs Devin CLI, Cognition's terminal coding agent: one-click connect with your own Devin account, always-on cloud sessions, isolated worktrees, and live sharing. Updated October 8, 2026 (first published September 8, 2026) · by the AQ team · Canonical: https://aq.dev/agents/devin-cli/ Devin CLI is Cognition's terminal coding agent, released on April 27, 2026: a local agent with full access to your codebase and tools, a custom terminal renderer written in Rust, a choice of frontier models plus Cognition's own SWE-1.6, and a hand-off that sends a session to a cloud agent with its own computer when work outgrows your laptop. AQ runs Devin CLI as a first-class harness: connect your Devin account once, and every workspace can start a Devin session on your team's always-on machine, in its own git worktree, with teammates able to open the same live terminal. This page covers what the CLI does, how the connection works, and what AQ adds, as of October 2026. ## What Devin CLI is Devin CLI (Cognition also calls it Devin for Terminal) is a single binary you run inside a project. You give it a task in plain language; it reads files, edits, runs shell commands, and checks its work. Three things distinguish it from the other terminal harnesses as of October 2026: - **Model choice at the prompt.** The CLI runs the latest models from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google and Cognition's own SWE family, plus open models; short names like opus, sonnet and swe resolve to the newest version in each family. Switch with the --model flag or the /model command, which opens a selector when run bare. - **Permission modes.** As of October 2026 the CLI documents five: normal (the default, with the alias auto: reads are approved, edits and shell commands prompt), accept-edits (file edits inside the workspace auto-approve), smart (a fast model additionally auto-approves clearly safe shell commands and fetches), bypass (everything auto-approves), and autonomous (requires the OS sandbox via --sandbox; shell commands and fetches auto-approve inside it, direct file writes still prompt). Switch with --permission-mode, the DEVIN_PERMISSION_MODE variable, the /mode command, or Shift+Tab. Our [permission modes guide](https://aq.dev/guides/coding-agent-permission-modes-explained/) compares these ladders across harnesses. - **Cloud hand-off.** Start locally, then hand the session to a Devin cloud agent that keeps working on its own machine. This is Devin's answer to the closed-laptop problem. ``` # Install (as of October 2026) curl -fsSL https://cli.devin.ai/install.sh | bash # Sign in from a remote or SSH terminal devin auth login --force-manual-token-flow # Run in a project cd your-project devin ``` ## Connecting Devin CLI to AQ Open Connections in AQ, choose Connect harness, and pick Devin CLI. AQ starts Devin's manual token flow in your per-user environment on the team machine and surfaces the approval link from app.devin.ai as a clickable banner, so sign-in works even though the CLI is running on a server with no browser. The token lands in your own home directory on that machine, not in AQ's database, and every teammate signs in with their own Devin account. AQ installs the CLI for you. Every AQ machine gets a pinned Devin CLI build downloaded from Cognition's official release artifact and verified by SHA-256 during provisioning. That keeps every workspace on a team on the same version, and it means nobody runs an install script by hand on a shared machine. ## What AQ adds AQ is the multiplayer coding harness where engineering teams run AI coding agents like Claude Code and Codex together: shared live terminals, a code editor, and app previews, in your own cloud. With Devin CLI connected, you get: - **An always-on session.** Devin runs in a persistent tmux session on your team's VM (your own cloud, or a dedicated AQ-managed VM). Close the laptop, open the workspace from your phone, and the session is where you left it. - **One isolated worktree per workspace.** Each workspace is a git worktree on its own branch, so several Devin sessions, or a Devin session next to a Codex session, never step on each other. Devin's own worktree-free multi-agent mode works inside that boundary. - **Multiplayer, not screen sharing.** Teammates open the same workspace and see the same terminal. Typing into it is delegated: they request control and the owner approves. Comments pinned on the app preview can be sent to the agent as prompts. - **Trust prompts handled.** Devin asks you to trust each new folder before it works there. Every AQ workspace is a new folder, so AQ pre-answers that for the worktree it created. Fresh workspaces never stall on the prompt. - **The rest of the workflow.** Agents commit and open PRs under each user's own GitHub auth, PRs are tracked per workspace, and a Linear issue labeled ai-task becomes a workspace with ownership following the assignee. ## Honest scope Devin CLI runs in AQ as a terminal harness. That means the real CLI in a real terminal, with everything the CLI itself supports, including its permission modes, model picker, and cloud hand-off. It is not yet available inside AQ Composer, AQ's native conversation surface, because Composer relies on structured session events that Devin CLI does not publish today. Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Kimi Code, Grok, Antigravity, Command Code, and OpenCode do run natively in Composer. If Cognition exposes that protocol, Devin joins them. Billing is Devin's. You pay Cognition for Devin CLI on your own plan; AQ does not proxy or mark up usage on your own subscriptions for any connected harness. Pricing for AQ itself is two plans: Free is a personal sandbox for one person (AQ creates a private machine, nothing to install, no time limit), and AQ Pro is $50 per user per month early access (standard $200, billed monthly), covering VMs you connect from your own cloud or a dedicated always-on AQ-managed VM. ## Trust, proxies, and worktrees Three setup questions come up constantly with Devin CLI, so here are the verified answers as of October 2026. Workspace trust: the CLI asks once per folder when you start it in a new directory, remembers the approval for future sessions there, and the non-interactive --print mode fails in an untrusted directory because it cannot show the prompt; scripts and CI pass `--respect-workspace-trust false` to skip the check in environments you already control. Proxies: in its default system mode the CLI respects HTTP_PROXY, HTTPS_PROXY and ALL_PROXY (plus PAC settings on macOS and Windows), a `proxy` block in config.json takes mode, url (http, https or socks5) and a no_proxy bypass list, and TLS-inspecting proxies work by installing the proxy's root CA in the operating system certificate store, which the CLI uses. Worktrees: the CLI ships no worktree manager of its own; its subagents share the parent's checkout, so running several full Devin sessions on one repository safely means giving each one its own git worktree, which is exactly the boundary an AQ workspace provides. ## When to pick Devin CLI in AQ Pick Devin CLI when you want Cognition's models and its permission model, or when your team already pays for Devin and wants the terminal agent on shared infrastructure instead of on individual laptops. Run it side by side with Claude Code or Codex on the same task in parallel workspaces and keep the better diff. Our [guide to choosing a coding harness](https://aq.dev/guides/how-to-choose-a-coding-harness/) covers the criteria, the [harness directory](https://aq.dev/guides/coding-agent-harness-directory/) keeps the whole field in one place, and if you are weighing the whole Devin product line against alternatives, see [Devin alternatives](https://aq.dev/alternatives/devin/). ## Frequently asked questions ### Does Devin CLI in AQ use my Devin subscription? Yes. You sign in with your own Devin account through Devin's manual token flow, and the CLI runs on your team's machine with your credentials. AQ never proxies or marks up that usage. ### Can I use Devin's cloud hand-off from an AQ workspace? The CLI's own commands work unchanged in an AQ terminal, so yes. Many teams find they do not need the hand-off, because the AQ workspace is already on an always-on machine that survives a closed laptop. ### Is Devin CLI available in AQ Composer? Not yet. Composer's native conversations rely on structured session events that Devin CLI does not expose today. Devin CLI runs in AQ as a terminal harness, in the same workspaces and with the same sharing as every other CLI. ### Which version of Devin CLI does AQ install? AQ pins the Devin CLI build, downloaded from Cognition's official release artifact and verified by SHA-256 on every machine. Pinned versions advance with AQ updates so a whole team stays on the same build. ### Can teammates watch a Devin CLI session in AQ? Yes. Any teammate with access to the workspace opens the same live terminal. They can request control to type into the session, and the owner approves in one click. ### Does Devin work with git worktrees? Devin CLI runs fine inside a git worktree, but it ships no worktree manager of its own as of October 2026, and its subagents share the parent agent's checkout rather than getting separate copies. To run several full Devin sessions on one repository without them stepping on each other, give each session its own worktree. In AQ every workspace is one isolated worktree on its own branch (ai/{id}-{slug}), so parallel Devin sessions are separated by construction. ### What is the Devin CLI agentic bridge? Cognition's documentation names no feature called an agentic bridge as of October 2026. People searching for it usually mean one of two documented things: the ACP integration (devin acp runs Devin as an Agent Client Protocol server speaking JSON-RPC over stdio, which is how JetBrains, Zed and Xcode embed the agent in their chat panels), or the cloud hand-off (the /handoff command, which moves a session from your terminal to a Devin cloud agent with its own machine). ### How do I trust a workspace in Devin? Start devin in the folder and approve the trust prompt; the CLI asks once per directory and remembers the decision for future sessions there. Non-interactive --print mode cannot show the prompt, so it fails in an untrusted directory: pass --respect-workspace-trust false to skip the check in scripts and CI, and only in environments you already control. In AQ the workspace's worktree is pre-trusted when the workspace is created, so fresh workspaces never stall on the prompt. ### How do I use Devin CLI behind a proxy? In its default system mode the CLI respects HTTP_PROXY, HTTPS_PROXY and ALL_PROXY, plus PAC settings on macOS and Windows, as of October 2026. You can also set a proxy block in config.json with mode (system, manual or off), url (http, https or socks5) and a no_proxy bypass list; an enterprise can enforce one machine-wide in system.json, which takes precedence, and the CLI exits at startup if both files configure a proxy. Behind a TLS-inspecting proxy, install the proxy's root CA in the operating system certificate store, which the CLI uses. ### What is Devin CLI auto mode? In Devin CLI, auto is documented as an alias for the default normal permission mode (reads auto-approve; edits and shell commands prompt), not a separate unattended mode, as of October 2026. If you want more autonomy, the ladder runs accept-edits, smart, bypass (everything auto-approves) and autonomous, which requires the OS sandbox via devin --sandbox --permission-mode autonomous and auto-approves shell commands and fetches inside it while direct file writes still prompt. Switch modes with --permission-mode, DEVIN_PERMISSION_MODE, /mode, or Shift+Tab. --- About AQ: AQ is the multiplayer coding harness where engineering teams run AI coding agents like Claude Code and Codex together: shared live terminals, a code editor, and app previews, in your own cloud. Start at [aq.dev](https://aq.dev/).