The AI tool market's big stories: Devin, Windsurf and Manus

Time: about 25 min reading + 0 min practice

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The gist

Between 2024 and 2026, the market for AI coding and AI agents went through several loud hype cycles and corporate deals. Devin promised to "replace developers" and later rebuilt its product and pricing. Windsurf went through a failed acquisition, a split between two companies and a rebrand into Devin Desktop. Meta bought Manus, and Chinese regulators forced the deal to be unwound. These stories teach the most important lesson: a tool can change its owner, its price or its name, and your process shouldn't fall apart when that happens.

🎨 Picture this: the AI tool market is like Formula 1. Devin came onto the track in a supercar with a big marketing budget, but the first laps showed a gap between the ads and the real work. Windsurf changed its team, its owner and its name in the middle of the race. Claude Code runs its own line: quieter, but the bet there is on how you drive, not on how you look.

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Key concepts

• Devin: the "AI software engineer" from Cognition: a loud launch, then repositioning into a product line
• Windsurf: an AI-powered IDE: a failed deal with OpenAI, a split between Google and Cognition, a rebrand into Devin Desktop
• Manus: a general-purpose AI agent: its purchase by Meta was unwound by order of Chinese regulators
• SWE-bench: a quality benchmark (the percentage of tasks solved)
• The right positioning: "assistant" vs "replacement"
• Vendor lock-in risk: why it matters not to depend on a single vendor

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Theory

Devin: hype, criticism, rebuilding

Launch (March 2024): Cognition Labs announces Devin, an "autonomous AI developer." A viral video: Devin finds a bug by itself, writes the code, runs the tests and deploys. Twitter explodes: "developers will lose their jobs!"

🎨 Picture this: Devin is like a job candidate who answers interview questions brilliantly but does worse on the actual job than in the story they told about themselves.

Reality:

• As early as April 2024, the promotional demos were criticized for inaccuracies: some of the work shown didn't match the task
• The loud promise to "replace the developer" created inflated expectations the product didn't live up to
• You need to test a product on your own tasks, not judge it by a viral video

Timeline:

What follows from this:

1. Inflated promises like "it will replace the developer" hurt trust
2. The product was rebuilt: from one "autonomous developer" into a set of tools for working alongside a human
3. Prices and plan contents change: check the current terms on the Devin website, not in this lesson

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Windsurf: a year of corporate deals

Windsurf (formerly Codeium) is an IDE with built-in AI. A good product with a real audience.

🎨 Picture this: Windsurf is like a good restaurant that changed owners, chef and sign in a single summer. The menu stayed recognizable, but the regulars didn't know what to expect.

Timeline:

What Windsurf users got:

• Uncertainty: "what's going to happen to our IDE?"
• A change of key developers
• Part of the team and the technology went to Google (a rival company)
• A new name and a new product direction: it's now a control center for multiple agents

Why this matters for you:

This is a clear illustration of vendor lock-in risk. If you build a workflow on a tool that can be bought, broken up, renamed or shut down, your business logic is at risk. The good news in this story: users didn't lose the product, it kept working under a new name. But you need a plan for this kind of situation in advance.

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Manus: the Meta acquisition and regulators stepping in

Manus is a general-purpose AI agent: research, websites and presentations, browser automation, working with email. More about the product: Manus AI.

🎨 Picture this: Manus is like an inventor who came up with something really cool, then found out that investors weren't the only ones interested in the invention: so was the government.

Timeline (according to media reports and the official Manus announcement):

Takeaway: the service got caught up in a regulatory decision, and users had to move their data in a hurry. The lesson for you: whether a tool is available depends not only on product quality but also on jurisdiction, deals and rules. Keep an export of your data and a backup tool (see the Backup & Disaster Recovery lesson). Also check whether the service is available in your country: each provider has its own list of supported countries.

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Market map as of October 2026

For up-to-date details on each tool, see the Tools catalog and the What's current page.

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What makes a tool durable: 5 questions

🎨 Picture this: a durable tool isn't the loudest one. It's the one that doesn't try to be an airplane and stays a reliable car: predictable, with a track record and a spare tire in the trunk.

1. Where does the work run: locally or in the cloud?

Running in the cloud is slower and more expensive, but handy for background tasks. Claude Code runs on your machine by default: it reads your files and understands the project's context. There are also cloud sessions in the browser (claude.ai/code) for tasks in a GitHub repository.

2. How much context fits?

As of October 2026, Fable 5.1, Opus 5.5 and Sonnet 5.5 have a context window of 1M tokens (units of text for AI), and Haiku 4.5 has 200K. An entire monorepo can fit into context. Current figures: What's current.

3. How is pricing structured?

Claude Code is included in the Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise plans, or works with an API key and pay-per-token billing. Prices and limits change; see the current ones on the What's current page.

4. "Assistant" or "replacement"?

At launch, Devin positioned itself as a "developer replacement." That created fear and inflated expectations. Claude Code positions itself as a tool in a human's hands. Realistic, useful, it works.

5. What about the ecosystem and the company's stability?

Anthropic is a Public Benefit Corporation. That isn't a guarantee of independence, but the provider has a stable API (application programming interface), documentation and a clear development plan. Any provider is still a risk, so you always need a fallback.

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Manus as a complement, not a competitor

An important nuance: Manus and Claude Code don't compete directly.

• Claude Code: a developer tool, usually works with a human in the loop
• Manus: an autonomous agent for long tasks (hours without supervision)

Manus isn't available everywhere and its terms change: check for your country. Claude Code remains the main development tool; Manus is an option for tasks that need hours of autonomy.

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The lesson for builders of AI products

🎨 Picture this: the history of this market is like a gold rush. Many prospectors went broke. The ones who got rich sold shovels and jeans: infrastructure for the prospectors.

What to take away:

1. Remember that owners change. In one year, Windsurf changed its owner and its name. Any tool, including Cursor and Claude Code, can change. Keep your project rules in plain files (CLAUDE.md, AGENTS.md), not only in one service's settings.

2. Vendor lock-in = risk. If your whole workflow is tied to one SaaS, you're vulnerable. Build so you can switch to a different LLM (with the llm-router pattern).

3. Hype ≠ quality. Devin was hype, and testing on real tasks shows something else. Test products on your own tasks, not on viral videos.

4. "Assistant" sells better than "replacement." Don't sell clients "AI will replace your team": that's scary. Sell "AI will speed up your team's work": it's more honest, and it sells.

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Tools and resources

• SWE-bench: a public AI coding benchmark
• Anthropic PBC: the company's structure (Public Benefit Corporation)
• Manus: the official site (availability depends on the region)
• Cursor: an AI IDE (if VS Code doesn't suit you)
• Devin Desktop: formerly Windsurf

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Key takeaways

Devin started with a loud promise and later rebuilt its product. In a single year, Windsurf went through a failed deal, a split between Google and Cognition, and a rebrand. Meta bought Manus, and Chinese regulators forced the deal to be unwound. The common lesson: a tool can change its owner, its price and its name.

Build your workflow so you can swap out the tool: project rules in files, an llm-router to protect against vendor lock-in, backups of your data.

Manus is a complement for multi-hour autonomous tasks, not a competitor. Both tools can live in the same workflow.

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Next lesson

→ Voice tools: Aqua Voice, /voice mode, Whisper