Grain vs Devin Desktop

Quick answer

This is not a choice between two hosted app builders. Devin Desktop, the 2026 rebrand of Windsurf, is a desktop coding environment built around the Agent Client Protocol. Its preview shows a local dev server inside the IDE and lets you send selected elements or errors back to the agent. Grain begins when that local work needs an address for other people. It takes files from the agent workflow and publishes them with sharing and, for full apps, Postgres, logins and scheduled jobs.

Fit first

What is different, verifiably

Where Devin Desktop is better

• You need a code editor. Devin Desktop is an IDE; Grain explicitly is not one and does not give humans an editing surface.
• You want several agents, including Claude Code and Codex, available in the same local workspace through an agent-neutral protocol.
• You need a tight local debugging loop. Its preview can select page elements or errors and send that context back to the agent.
• The application should remain local during development and does not yet need an audience, access controls or a public address.

Where Grain is better

• A teammate or customer needs to open the result without running your local development server or installing your IDE.
• The preview must keep serving after you close the laptop instead of depending on Devin Desktop's in-IDE view of a local development server.
• The app needs hosted Postgres, login or scheduled jobs beyond the local preview-to-agent debugging loop provided through Devin Desktop.
• You need public, password-protected or invite-only sharing and want reader comments to return to the coding agent.
• You want a custom domain or a self-hostable publishing core. Those are publishing concerns, not local IDE preview features.

Moving between them

1. From Devin Desktop to Grain: keep working in the same local repository. There is no special project export step because Devin Desktop edits local files.
2. Open a terminal in the project and run grain init. This creates the Grain workspace and writes agent configuration. Devin Desktop can continue hosting Claude Code or Codex while those files connect the project to Grain.
3. Ask the agent to confirm the application starts and to replace any purely local data assumptions with workspace Postgres if durable shared data is required.
4. Run grain push, grain checkpoint -m "publish desktop preview", then grain share --public or use a password. The share URL, not the local preview address, is what you send to other people.
5. From Grain to Devin Desktop: run grain pull, open the resulting files in the IDE and start the project's local dev server. Hosted Postgres data, login accounts, schedules, comments, share settings and domains do not become local simply because the files were pulled.

Choice rule

Choose Devin Desktop

if the immediate job is editing, running and debugging code locally with one or more agents.

Choose Grain

if the code already exists and the job is giving its output a durable URL, application services and an audience.

Use both

if Devin Desktop is your local agent-neutral IDE and Grain is the publication target for previews, reports or apps other people must open.

Frequently asked questions