Comparison
Devin: Autonomous desktop agent vs. bounded overnight desk.
Devin is a general-purpose autonomous agent that takes a written goal and operates a full browser, terminal, and editor to deliver it. Driftlock does not take written goals; it reads the alert, log, or CVE already in your stack, and produces one tested pull request inside a hermetic sandbox. Where Devin optimises for open-ended delegation, Driftlock optimises for the narrow case where the input is already a real engineering signal and the output is one audit-linked PR.
Posture
Driftlock runs self-hosted in your VPC; no third-party LLM is ever called at the test step.
Identity
Commits sign with your cosign key in your KMS or HSM. Keys rotate on your schedule.
Audit
Seven per-PR columns — alert id, sandbox run hash, SBOM hash, approver chain, signature, diff bytes, triage verdict — replayable on your storage tier.
What they do
Devin in one paragraph.
Devin is a hosted autonomous agent that accepts a written goal and operates a managed browser, terminal, and editor to deliver it; the unit of work is a free-form task assigned by the user, and the agent runs as a managed sandbox inside Cognition’s infrastructure.
Where Driftlock differs
Eight dimensions where the posture diverges.
Each row names one axis — autonomy, hosting, audit, signing, SBOM, sandbox, monorepo scale, CI touch — and states both sides on that axis. No feature checklist, no marketing re-framing.
Axis · autonomy scope
Them
Accepts a free-form written goal and decides what to build, how to test, and when to stop.
Driftlock
Acts only on overnight signals already in your stack (CI failure, Dependabot alert, CVE, on-call page); no goal, no run.
Axis · self-hosting
Them
Hosted product; the customer does not run the agent, the sandbox, or the model inside their own cloud.
Driftlock
Single Helm + Terraform deployment inside your VPC, with no third-party LLM calls at any step.
Axis · audit trail
Them
Records session state on the Devin control plane; replay requires Cognition as the intermediary.
Driftlock
Records seven per-PR columns (alert id, sandbox run hash, SBOM hash, approver chain, signature, diff bytes, triage verdict) replayable on your storage tier.
Axis · commit-signing
Them
Does not natively sign commits with a customer-held key in a customer KMS; signing is delegated to the workspace identity.
Driftlock
Commits sign with your cosign key kept in your KMS or HSM; key rotation happens on your schedule.
Axis · SBOM
Them
Does not emit a per-PR SBOM as a first-class artifact; dependency review depends on the workspace’s tooling.
Driftlock
Emits an SBOM hash per PR, recorded alongside the diff and the signature so reviewers can diff two SBOMs without re-running the build.
Axis · sandbox execution
Them
Operates a managed sandbox with browser and terminal; the customer does not control the toolchain pinning or the test cache.
Driftlock
Runs inside a hermetic sandbox that mounts the existing monorepo’s toolchain and test cache, and replays the original regression before opening the PR.
Axis · monorepo scale
Them
Optimised for breadth across many repos and languages; large monorepos are not the primary design target.
Driftlock
Built for one large monorepo per deployment; the sandbox mounts the monorepo’s existing caches so a CI rerun is bounded by what CI itself already proves.
Axis · CI touch
Them
May invoke CI as part of a goal but does not read CI failures as the primary trigger surface.
Driftlock
Treats CI as the source of truth — the agent reads CI failures as triggers and reruns the original regression inside the sandbox before opening the PR.
8 axes · posture-level · no feature checklist
FAQ
Questions comparison-stage buyers ask.
See it on your stack
Compare on a real monorepo, not a slide deck.
The architecture page names the four signal sources the watcher reads; the governance page enumerates the seven per-PR columns a regulator replays. Run the comparison against one of your real monorepos on a ten-day scoped trial — you'll see the diffs Driftlock ships and the audit trail your reviewers sign.