Devin user agent
Operated by Cognition
Devin is the user agent reported for Cognition's AI software engineer, which browses websites while working on engineering tasks.
The Devin bot at a glance
- Devin is operated by Cognition and loads web pages in a browser to complete tasks on behalf of a user.
- The robots.txt token for Devin is Devin.
- Blocking an AI agent has no effect on search rankings.
- Devin robots.txt support: Yes.
- Recommendation for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): Your choice.
What is Devin?
Devin reads documentation and web pages while completing coding tasks for engineering teams.
Public registries report that it follows robots.txt.
Should you block Devin?
Blocking Devin is a business decision: it protects your content but can lower how well AI products know your brand.
| Effect on search rankings | Blocking an AI agent has no effect on search rankings. |
|---|---|
| Effect on AI visibility | Blocking stops agents from completing tasks on your website for their users, which can cost bookings or sales that agents would have made. |
| Follows robots.txt | Yes |
| Recommendation | Your choice |
How to block or allow Devin
Put the robots.txt rule in the file at the root of every domain and subdomain, for example https://example.com/robots.txt. The token Devin is matched case-insensitively.
robots.txt: block
# Block Devin
User-agent: Devin
Disallow: /robots.txt: allow
# Allow Devin
User-agent: Devin
Allow: /robots.txt: partial
# Keep Devin out of private areas only
User-agent: Devin
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /cart/
Disallow: /checkout/
Disallow: /my-account/
Allow: /Nginx
# Nginx: return 403 to Devin
if ($http_user_agent ~* "(Devin)") {
return 403;
}Apache
# Apache .htaccess: return 403 to Devin
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (Devin) [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F,L]Cloudflare WAF
# Cloudflare > Security > WAF > Custom rule, action: Block
(http.user_agent contains "Devin")How to verify real Devin traffic
Cognition publishes no IP list or reverse DNS pattern for Devin, so the user agent cannot be verified. Anyone can send the same string. Rate-limit unusual volume instead of trusting the name.
How to find Devin in your server logs
Search the web server access log for the token. The command below counts Devin requests per URL on Nginx or Apache.
grep -i "Devin" access.log | awk '{print $7}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -20For a full report per AI bot, upload the log to the AI Log File Analyzer, a free tool by Justin Hà.
Devin FAQ
Devin uses the robots.txt token "Devin". Cognition does not publish a full user-agent string, so match the token inside the User-Agent header.
Yes. Cognition states that Devin follows robots.txt rules written for the "Devin" token.
Blocking an AI agent has no effect on search rankings. Blocking stops agents from completing tasks on your website for their users, which can cost bookings or sales that agents would have made.
Add two lines to the robots.txt file at the root of each domain and subdomain: "User-agent: Devin" followed by "Disallow: /". The token is case-insensitive. Changes can take up to 24 hours to be picked up.
Not reliably. Cognition publishes no IP list or reverse DNS pattern for Devin, so anyone can send the same user agent. Rate-limit unusual volume instead of trusting the name.
Search your server access log for "Devin", for example with: grep -i "Devin" access.log. The AI Log File Analyzer by Justin Hà counts visits per AI bot from an uploaded log file.
Sources: Public bot registry. Last reviewed by Justin Hà.
See which of these bots actually reach your website
The AI Log File Analyzer by Justin Hà counts visits from GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and other AI crawlers in your server log, for free. The GEO Technical Package sets up robots.txt, llms.txt and crawler access for AI search.
