devin-handoff

Devin Handoff

Hand off a task to Devin. Devin gets its own VM with shell, browser, and full repo access. You get a URL to watch progress, or can poll until the session completes.

All scripts/devin-handoff.sh paths below are relative to this skill's directory. If installed as a Claude Code or Codex plugin, use "${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/.agents/skills/devin-handoff/scripts/devin-handoff.sh".

Prerequisites

• DEVIN_API_KEY env var (get one at https://app.devin.ai/settings/api-keys)
• curl, jq in PATH
• git (optional, for auto-detecting repo/branch/diff)

When to use

• Task needs a running server, database, or Docker
• Task requires browser interaction (OAuth, screenshots, E2E tests)
• Task involves CI/CD pipelines or deployments
• Task is long-running and the user wants to continue locally
• You need parallel execution on a separate machine

Steps

1. Gather context

From the current working directory:

1. Repo: Run git remote get-url origin, extract owner/repo
2. Branch: Run git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD
3. Diff: Run git diff HEAD (truncated to 100KB automatically)
4. Task: The user's request, concise and specific
5. Context (optional): Summarize what you've learned — files examined, root cause hypotheses, partial fixes

2. Create the session

scripts/devin-handoff.sh create \
  --task "Fix the auth timeout bug — update middleware to respect configured timeout" \
  --context "Investigated src/auth/session.py and src/auth/middleware.py. Timeout is hardcoded at 30m in session.py:42."

The script auto-detects repo, branch, and diff. The --context flag is optional but helps Devin start faster. All sessions are automatically tagged with handoff.

3. Report the URL and poll

Tell the user the session URL. If they want to wait for completion, poll until the session finishes:

scripts/devin-handoff.sh poll SESSION_ID --interval 15

The poll command prints status updates and exits when Devin finishes. It also prints the PR URL if one was created.

4. Archive when done (optional)

Archive a session to clean it up from the sidebar:

scripts/devin-handoff.sh archive SESSION_ID --org-id ORG_ID

Or use --archive on poll to auto-archive when the session finishes:

scripts/devin-handoff.sh poll SESSION_ID --interval 15 --archive --org-id ORG_ID