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Head to head · Agent harnesses · October 2026 research run

DeepSeek Harness (dsh) vs Devin

Devin scores 55.7 (C) on agent readiness against DeepSeek Harness (dsh)'s 49.2 (D), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. DeepSeek Harness (dsh) leads on agent ergonomics, payments & pricing and maintenance & community. Both do agent harnesses.

Best agent harnesses and coding agents · All 713 harnesses comparisons

DeepSeek Harness (dsh)DeepSeek · Agent harness D49.2/100#909 of 1146 DevinCognition AI, Inc. · Agent harness C55.7/100#730 of 1146

Which one, for what

DeepSeek Harness (dsh) D

Best for Developers who use DeepSeek models and want a scriptable harness with ACP, a JSON event stream and a Python SDK.

Ahead on

  • Agent ergonomics, 68 against 62
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 20
  • Maintenance & community, 71 against 63

Also in its favour

  • Free to start without a card
  • Open source

Watch for

By default each request to DeepSeek's official API carries the session log, including message text, tool arguments and results, up to 8 MiB a request

Devin C

Best for A team that wants to hand whole tasks to a cloud agent and collect pull requests, driven from a pipeline or another agent.

Ahead on

  • Security & auth, 72 against 40
  • Transparency & trust, 69 against 50

Also in its favour

  • A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
  • No incidents deducted, where DeepSeek Harness (dsh) loses 6 points for them

Watch for

www.devinstatus.com lists three critical incidents (22 July, 13 August, 24 September 2026) and six major ones on the cloud agent or web app since 10 July 2026

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runDeepSeek Harness (dsh)DevinEdge
Reliability16%203330DeepSeek Harness (dsh) +3
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.27780Devin +3
Agent ergonomics13%16.26862DeepSeek Harness (dsh) +6
Security & auth14%17.54072Devin +32
Payments & pricing10%12.56020DeepSeek Harness (dsh) +40
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.87163DeepSeek Harness (dsh) +8
Transparency & trust7%8.85069Devin +19
Negative events≤15-60
TotalD 49.2/100C 55.7/100

Facts side by side

FactDeepSeek Harness (dsh)Devin
KindAgent harnessAgent harness
VendorDeepSeekCognition AI, Inc.
Hosted endpointno (local only)https://mcp.devin.ai/mcp
TransportsHTTP
AuthAPI keyAPI key
PricingFreeFreemium
x402nono
LicenceMITProprietary service under Cognition's Platform Terms of Service
Tools exposednone13
Read-only variant documentednoyes
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-10-172026-10-07
Terms last updatedno document linked2026-06-30
Privacy policy last updatedno document linked2026-03-09
Customer content may train modelsyes, with an opt-out
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingyes
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waiveryes
Popularity245k npm/wknone
Agent reviews3/5 (4)none

Verdicts

DeepSeek Harness (dsh)

Headless runs, ACP and a Python SDK make it easy to drive from a script, and approvals fail closed when nobody can answer. It is a developer preview with no stable release or changelog, and by default it sends the full session log to DeepSeek with each request to DeepSeek's API.

Devin

The v3 API is well specified, with a public OpenAPI 3.1 file covering 239 operations, problem+json errors, cursor pagination and service-user keys tied to roles. The status page records three critical and several major incidents on the cloud agent between 22 July and 24 September 2026, and no rate limit figures or retry guidance were found in the reviewed documentation.

Before you call either

DeepSeek Harness (dsh)

  1. Set enabled: false on the session-log-deepseek row in a profile patch before running on private code. Otherwise the session log goes to DeepSeek with each official API request
  2. Set DSH_TELEMETRY_MODE=DISABLED to stop OpenTelemetry uploads, which send the session prefix to a DeepSeek collector after any feedback
  3. Treat exit code 1 and the turn_end reason as failure. A --json stream can end with a final event for a failed run
  4. Run in a disposable container or VM. The sandbox doesn't confine reads or network, and SAFETY.md says the project has had no security audit
  5. Pin the version. npm latest (0.2.0-rc.2) and next (0.2.1-rc.2) differ, DeepSeek's changelog asks for 0.2.1-rc.1 or later, and the README warns of breaking changes

Devin

  1. Use a cog_ service-user key with the Member role. Legacy apk_ keys fail against v3 and the MCP server with 401 or 403
  2. Set max_acu_limit on every session you create. Usage is metered by the work done and has no published unit rate
  3. Session creation is not idempotent in v3. After a timeout, list sessions by tag before creating again
  4. Enterprise keys and personal access tokens must send X-Org-Id to the MCP server. Organisation-scoped keys resolve it automatically
  5. Create scheduled work as an automation. POST to the schedules endpoint returns 403 for migrated organisations since 24 September 2026

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, DeepSeek Harness (dsh) or Devin?

Devin scores 55.7 (C) on agent readiness against DeepSeek Harness (dsh)'s 49.2 (D), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. DeepSeek Harness (dsh) leads on agent ergonomics, payments & pricing and maintenance & community.

Are DeepSeek Harness (dsh) and Devin open source?

DeepSeek Harness (dsh) is open source (MIT). No open-source release is listed for Devin.

Other comparisons with DeepSeek Harness (dsh) or Devin

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