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devin-cli

Skill14 starsChanged 10 days agoMITView on GitHub

Use Devin CLI as a subagent. Lets the main agent prompt Devin CLI from the terminal in headless mode with the `devin` command, and send the goal, the decisions and the scope with the task. Use when the user asks to delegate work to Devin CLI, when a task needs a second independent agent, or when a plan needs a fresh perspective.

  • Pipes a download into a shell

1 other project uses a version of this.

Adopted by

Most recently taken up by

The file

We split this skill into the rules it gives an agent

12 rules. About 0 are common, 9 are distinctive, and 3 are very specific to this project.

  • ≈0

    Common · estimate

    Many files like this have a rule of this kind.

  • ≈9

    Distinctive · estimate

    This author's own choices. Worth a look.

  • 3

    Very specific

    Tied to their project's names, files or tools. Probably skip.

  • Common
  • Distinctive
  • Very specific
  1. Distinctive:

    Secrets or policy-sensitive work: Do not pipe credentials into a subagent.

    line 48
  2. Distinctive:

    Low return on investment: If writing the handoff costs more than doing the edit, do the edit.

    line 50
  3. Distinctive:

    Treat every call as stateless delegation: the subagent keeps nothing between calls, so each command must carry its own state.

    line 61
  4. Distinctive:

    Write the prompt as a transfer of shared state, not as a title.

    line 71
  5. Distinctive:

    Prefer sequential delegations with explicit carry-over.

    line 82
  6. Distinctive:

    After the subagent returns:

    line 96
  7. Distinctive:

    Every vendor has its own terminal rules.

    line 104
  8. Distinctive:

    Exit code 0 is not success: If stdout is empty, treat the run as failed and read stderr.

    line 108
  9. Very specific:

    Keep all seven sub-headings, in this order, even if the answer is "none".

    line 119
  10. Distinctive:

    No output-format flag (text/json) and no exit-code table are documented.

    line 149
  11. Very specific:

    Run devin models list — "list available models, organized by model family." Select for a run with --model <MODEL> (or DEVIN_MODEL).

    line 175
  12. Very specific:

    If the user names a model, use it.

    line 178

≈ “Common” is an estimate: at least 1 in 5 of the 350,495 skill files we read have a rule of the same kind, not the same words. “Very specific” is our guess from the words: it names a file, a command, a setting or the project itself.

Keep what fits and drop the rest. Your version, ready for your agents.
Files
SKILL.md

Devin CLI (subagent / task delegation)

<!-- ============================================================================= GLOBAL HALF — sections 1 to 5. These sections are identical in every skill in this repository. Copy them without any change. Do not put a vendor name or a flag in them. A change here must be made in all skills at the same time. ============================================================================= -->

What is it

This skill teaches your agent to use an agent from another vendor as a subagent.

Almost every coding agent has a headless mode. Headless mode runs the agent from the terminal with one command and returns the answer to stdout. This skill gives the command pattern for one such agent, and the protocol to transfer enough context with the task.

You stay the main agent. You keep the plan, the decisions and the conversation with the user. The subagent does one bounded task and reports back.

When to delegate

  • The user asks for it. The user names another agent, or asks for a second opinion.
  • Large or multi-step work. The task covers several files, phases or checkpoints.
  • Code review with a fresh mind. Another agent reviews the work with a different lens and no memory of the decisions that produced it.
  • Planning that needs different ideas. A second agent proposes options that you did not consider.
  • An internal council. Several subagents answer the same question, and you compare the answers.
  • Deep research. The other CLI has web search, web extraction or browser automation.
  • Background investigation. A long task runs in the background while you continue in the foreground.

When not to delegate

  • Small or single-step tasks. One or two edits, or a short explanation, are faster in this thread.
  • Tight feedback loops. The user wants quick back-and-forth in one conversation.
  • Secrets or policy-sensitive work. Do not pipe credentials into a subagent. Redact first.
  • Context you already hold. Repeating the whole plan in a prompt adds no value.
  • Low return on investment. If writing the handoff costs more than doing the edit, do the edit.
  • Work that needs high precision and full judgement. A subagent without your context will break a task that depends on a detail only this session knows.

Delegation and context transfer protocol

An isolated subagent saves tokens, but it splits the story. The subagent does not see this conversation. It has no memory of the goal you agreed with the user, the decisions you already made, or the paths you agreed not to touch. A poor handoff causes misread tasks, wrong assumptions about the stack or the style, and wasted edits.

Treat every call as stateless delegation: the subagent keeps nothing between calls, so each command must carry its own state. A good handoff happens when you keep these practices in mind:

  • Shared state handoff. The prompt carries the original goal, the decisions already made, and the explicit scope, to bridge the subagent's missing session history.
  • Contextual preservation. The high-volume work stays in the isolated process, so the bulk never enters this conversation and no "split story" forms from missing history.
  • Result reconciliation. What comes back is folded into this thread afterwards, so there is a single source of truth.

Write the prompt as a transfer of shared state, not as a title. Include all six fields:

IncludeWhy
GoalThe same objective as the user, not only the immediate micro-task.
DecisionsFramework, patterns, naming, "use X not Y" — anything that would otherwise be guessed wrong.
ScopeThe absolute paths and modules to touch, and the areas to leave alone. A relative path may not resolve where you expect.
ConstraintsPerformance, accessibility, compatibility, review gates, "no new dependencies".
VerificationThe exact command the subagent must run and pass before it returns.
OutputFor example: "report only, no edits", "apply edits with a minimal diff", "list the files changed".

Prefer sequential delegations with explicit carry-over. Parallel runs diverge unless every run gets the same briefing.

Run the subagent in the mode that does the work without asking for approval. Headless mode has nobody to answer a permission prompt. Any mode that stops to ask will stall, or return an empty answer with a success exit code. Each CLI names this mode differently — take the flag from the vendor card below.

Never call a subagent in plan mode. Many CLIs have a plan or read-only mode. That mode makes the other agent write a plan for itself, which is not what you asked for: you want its work or its answer, and you keep the planning. Plan mode also waits for someone to approve that plan, so the run comes back with nothing. If you want no file changes, keep the auto-approving mode and write "report only, no edits" in the Output field. Do not use plan mode to make a run read-only.

After the subagent returns:

  • Report to the user. Give a short summary. Do not paste long logs unless the user asks.
  • Reconcile the context. Record the decisions it made, the files it changed, and the open risks, so this session stays the single source of truth.

CLI failure modes

Every vendor has its own terminal rules. A headless run fails quietly more often than it fails loudly.

  • Wrap the call in an external timeout. A headless CLI can stall before its own timeout starts.
  • Exit code 0 is not success. If stdout is empty, treat the run as failed and read stderr. A permission the CLI could not ask for, and a prompt that never arrived, both look like success.
  • Never carry a flag habit from one CLI to another. The same short flag means different things in different tools. In OpenCode, -p is --password: passing a prompt to it empties the message and the run waits on stdin forever. Confirm every flag against the CLI's own --help.
  • An unrecognized-flag error means this skill is stale, not that the task is impossible. Read --help, continue with the flags that exist, and tell the user which line in this file is wrong.
<!-- ============================================================================= VENDOR HALF — section 6. Everything below is specific to this CLI. Keep all seven sub-headings, in this order, even if the answer is "none". Take every flag from the installed binary (`<cli> --help`), not from memory and not from another skill in this repository. ============================================================================= -->

Vendor card

Documented, not run against a binary. Checked against docs.devin.ai on 2026-11-05. Confirm every flag with devin --help before trusting it, especially the permission-mode value — see below.

Binary and prompt form

  • Binary: devin
  • Install: curl -fsSL https://cli.devin.ai/install.sh | bash (macOS, Linux, WSL; vendor CLI docs). On Windows, run irm https://static.devin.ai/cli/setup.ps1 | iex in PowerShell.
  • Prompt form: flag. -p, --print [PROMPT] is documented as "print response and exit (non-interactive mode)," with the prompt as its argument, e.g. devin -p "prompt text". The prompt can also be given after a bare -- (devin -- add a login page), but for delegation use -p so the run is explicitly non-interactive and exits.

Headless and output flags

NeedFlag
Run once and exit-p, --print [PROMPT]
Load the initial prompt from a file--prompt-file <path>
Export the conversation after each turn--export <file>
Config file--config <path>
Workspace trust check (default true)--respect-workspace-trust [true|false]

No output-format flag (text/json) and no exit-code table are documented.

Approvals and permissions

Set with --permission-mode <MODE> (or DEVIN_PERMISSION_MODE). The current docs give:

ModeBehavior
normal (alias auto)Default; read-only tools auto-run, writes/shell prompt.
accept-editsAuto-approves file edits in the workspace; still prompts for shell/fetch.
smartAuto-approves edits; a fast model judges fetch/shell safety and falls back to prompting.
dangerous (aliases bypass, yolo)Auto-approves all tool calls, including shell.
autonomousRequires --sandbox. Shell commands and fetches auto-approve inside the OS sandbox; direct file edits via the edit/write tools still prompt, because those tools run in the CLI process rather than inside the sandbox. Granting a Write(...) scope mid-session dynamically expands the sandbox.

Resolved naming conflict: earlier docs disagreed on whether the bypass mode is called dangerous or bypass. The current reference page states the flag's literal value is dangerous, with bypass and yolo as documented aliases — pass whichever your installed binary's --help accepts.

What happens with nobody to answer: the docs state --print/-p "cannot show the workspace trust prompt, so it fails in an untrusted directory" — that specific case is a hard failure, not a stall. Beyond workspace trust, the general fallback for an unanswered tool-approval prompt in normal/accept-edits/smart mode is not documented — avoid the situation by running dangerous (or autonomous with --sandbox) for headless delegation.

Models and how to list them

Run devin models list — "list available models, organized by model family." Select for a run with --model <MODEL> (or DEVIN_MODEL).

If the user names a model, use it. Otherwise run devin models list first, and use the web / Artificial Analysis only for pricing and benchmark comparisons.

Command pattern

devin -p "GOAL: [goal] | DECISIONS: [decisions] | SCOPE: [paths] | CONSTRAINTS: [constraints] | VERIFICATION: [test_command] | OUTPUT: [format]" \
  --permission-mode dangerous 2>&1

Prompt examples

  • Implement: devin -p "GOAL: [goal] | DECISIONS: [decisions] | SCOPE: [paths] | CONSTRAINTS: [constraints] | VERIFICATION: [test_command] | OUTPUT: [format]" --permission-mode dangerous
  • Investigate (report only): devin -p "GOAL: Map how [feature] works | SCOPE: [paths] | CONSTRAINTS: do not edit any file | OUTPUT: concise file:line map"
  • Sandboxed autonomous run: devin -p "GOAL: [task] | ..." --permission-mode autonomous --sandbox

Docs and reference

  • Flags, permission modes, models, skills, auth: reference.md
  • Vendor documentation: https://docs.devin.ai/cli/reference/commands and https://docs.devin.ai/cli/reference/permissions
  • Checked against the official Devin documentation on 2026-11-05; not run against an installed binary. Confirm with devin --help before trusting a flag, particularly the exact --permission-mode bypass value. The commands reference lists dangerous (aliases yolo, bypass); the permissions page omits dangerous. This is a vendor docs inconsistency.

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