Autonomous Agents: Devin & OpenHands
Hand off a whole task to an agent that works in its own sandbox.
The tools so far run with you. Autonomous agents work for you — you hand off a task and come back to a finished result.
Devin
Devin (Cognition) is a paid autonomous engineer with its own cloud workspace, browser, editor and shell. You describe a task, it plans and executes over minutes or hours, and you review the result like a teammate's pull request.
Use it for:
- Well-specified, self-contained tasks (a new endpoint, a migration, a bugfix with tests).
- Work you can review as a diff at the end.
OpenHands
OpenHands (formerly OpenDevin) is the open-source equivalent — an agent platform you can run yourself.
# Docker-based quick start
docker run -it --rm -p 3000:3000 \
-e SANDBOX_RUNTIME_CONTAINER_IMAGE=docker.all-hands.dev/all-hands-ai/runtime:0.20-nikto \
docker.all-hands.dev/all-hands-ai/openhands:0.20It gives you a web UI with an agent that edits code, runs commands and browses the web inside a Docker sandbox.
The handoff pattern
Autonomous agents only work well when the task is:
- Small and clear — "Add pagination to GET /users", not "improve the app".
- Verifiable — tests or an acceptance checklist you can check.
- Low blast radius — nothing destructive, nothing against production.
When to use them
- Batch, repetitive engineering tasks.
- "While I sleep" jobs.
- Exploring an unfamiliar codebase and writing a report.
The best autonomous-agent users write the task like a ticket: context, constraints, and a definition of done. The agent fills in the how.