Windsurf Rules & Memories (now Devin Desktop)
https://docs.devin.ai/desktop/cascade/memories
Now Devin Desktop (ex-Windsurf). Rules: global_rules.md (6K chars) plus workspace rules in .devin/rules/ (fallback .windsurf/rules/, 12K chars each) and AGENTS.md via the same engine. Cascade auto-memories stored in ~/.codeium/windsurf/memories/ are legacy-agent only, with a migration path to skills.
Acquired · Verified 2026-10-29 · fresh as of 2026-10-29 · 47 cited facts, 2 with a third-party source · 1 recorded change · Suggest a correction
At a glance
- Type
- Codebase semantic + auto-memory vendor fix
- Tier
- T1
- Section
- File-backed / editor paradigms
- Created
- 2024-11 (Windsurf Editor launched November 2024; Cascade Memories feature included at launch) vendor fix
- Latest release
- not applicable — not OSS fix
- License
- not applicable — not OSS fix
- GitHub
- not applicable — no GitHub repo fix
- Pricing
- not applicable — not commercial fix
- Funding
- not applicable — feature of Devin Desktop; Windsurf acquired by Cognition (definitive agreement 2025-07, terms undisclosed) third-party fix
- Freshness
- 2026-10-29 fix
- Layer
- agent-infra repo fix
- Licensing
- commercial vendor fix
- Protocols
- mcp-client vendor fix
Memory taxonomy
- storage
- file
- retrieval
- injection
- persistence
- cross-session
- update
- overwrite
- unit
- document
- governance
- user-controllable
- conflict
- llm-arbitrate
When to use
Optimised for: simplicity / git-versioned / human-readable
Anti-fit: not for non-coding / non-IDE use cases
Pros & cons
Pros
Two-tier model — explicit rules + implicit auto-memory — covers both curated and emergent guidance; Codeium ecosystem maturity.
Cons
Auto-memory layer is opaque (no inspect UI); rules + memories together can compound into context bloat.
Claims & capabilities
Windsurf at 9.4% market share (2026); .windsurfrules + Memories pattern follows the same project-config-as-markdown approach as Cursor and Claude Code; smaller community than Cursor/Claude Code
Technical surface
- API surface
- not applicable — IDE feature
- Backend storage
- file (.windsurfrules / global memories)
- Deployment
- not applicable — not a deployable product
- Embedding model
- not applicable — rules file
- Multi-tenancy
- hard-isolation
- MCP
- not applicable — file-as-memory paradigm (no API surface)
- A2A
- not applicable — file-as-memory paradigm
- OpenTelemetry
- not applicable — file-as-memory paradigm
Compare Windsurf Rules & Memories (now Devin Desktop) with…
Alternatives to Windsurf Rules & Memories (now Devin Desktop) → live options ranked by shared design, licence, hosting and MCP support
Similar systems
Other file-backed / editor paradigms in the catalog, ranked by inbound references.
- Cline .clinerules T2
Markdown rule files in a workspace .clinerules/ (or .cline/rules/) directory plus global rules in ~/Documents/Cline/Rules; workspace wins on conflict. Per-rule toggles, conditional rules via YAML 'paths' globs, and AGENTS.md / .cursorrules / .windsurfrules are also read.
- OpenClaw memory T3
Memory system of the viral OpenClaw personal agent: plain Markdown files (USER.md, MEMORY.md, daily memory/YYYY-MM-DD.md notes, DREAMS.md) with memory_search/memory_get tools, automatic pre-compaction flush and a 'dreaming' sweep that distils daily notes into long-term memory; pluggable engines (LanceDB, Honcho, wiki). spawned an ecosystem of memory plugins (memory-lancedb-pro, gbrain, MemClaw)
- AGENTS.md T1
Open Markdown 'README for agents' at repo root; nested files in subprojects take precedence (closest wins). Holds build/test commands, conventions and PR rules. Stewarded by the Agentic AI Foundation (Linux Foundation); supported by Codex, Jules, Cursor, Copilot, Gemini CLI, Devin/Windsurf and others.
- Aider CONVENTIONS.md / .aider.conf.yml T2
CONVENTIONS.md (any name, loaded via --read or read: in config); .aider.conf.yml (home / git-root / cwd, last wins); .aiderignore (gitignore-syntax).
- Basic Memory T3
Local-first MCP memory where each memory is a Markdown note with observations and wikilink relations that form a traversable knowledge graph, indexed with SQLite (optional Postgres vectors), plus an optional hosted cloud. widely used MCP memory server with a paid cloud tier
- CLAUDE.md T1
CLAUDE.md files (managed, user, project, local scopes) concatenated into context at session start, with @imports and path-scoped .claude/rules/; complemented by Claude-written auto memory (MEMORY.md index). Project-root file re-injected after /compact.
Sources (46 cited facts, 2 third-party)
Each fact links to the page it came from; the badge says who published it (how to read sources).
- What it is Codebase semantic + auto-memory vendor
- What it does & what's distinct Now Devin Desktop (ex-Windsurf). Rules: global_rules.md (6K chars) plus workspace rules … vendor
- Claims / benefits Windsurf at 9.4% market share (2026); .windsurfrules + Memories pattern follows the same… third-party
- Modalities text vendor
- Created 2024-11 (Windsurf Editor launched November 2024; Cascade Memories feature included at la… vendor
- Funding not applicable — feature of Devin Desktop; Windsurf acquired by Cognition (definitive ag… third-party
- Founders / pedigree Codeium (Varun Mohan & Douglas Chen, co-founders; ex-NVIDIA; General Catalyst-backed) vendor
- Memory volume / scale ~100K-token effective context (vendor claim) vendor
- Backend storage file (.windsurfrules / global memories) vendor
- Multi-tenancy hard-isolation vendor
- Encryption at-rest + in-transit vendor
- SSO / RBAC SSO + RBAC vendor
- Versioning snapshots vendor
- Tombstoning hard-delete supported vendor
- Schema evolution free-form / no schema vendor
- Namespace primitives hierarchical vendor
- Contradiction handling LLM resolves and overwrites vendor
- Forgetting policy user-controlled forget vendor
- Import / export Markdown / plain text (the file itself is the export) vendor
- Validated verticals coding agents only - software engineering teams vendor
- Time to running <10min (drop a file in repo) vendor
- Anti-fit not for non-coding / non-IDE use cases vendor
- Optimised for simplicity / git-versioned / human-readable vendor
- Adjacent infrastructure requires the corresponding IDE / editor vendor
- Pros Two-tier model — explicit rules + implicit auto-memory — covers both curated and emergen… vendor
- Cons Auto-memory layer is opaque (no inspect UI); rules + memories together can compound into… vendor
- Project & sources Windsurf Memories docs windsurf.com vendor
- cost-token-budget no vendor
- cost-prompt-caching no vendor
- cost-semantic-caching no vendor
- cost-batching no vendor
- cost-model-routing no vendor
- cost-streaming-only no vendor
- cost-observability-cost-attribution no vendor
- eval-langsmith-evals no vendor
- eval-braintrust no vendor
- eval-weights-and-biases-agent no vendor
- eval-helicone-evals no vendor
- eval-custom-test-harness no vendor
- eval-human-loop no vendor
- eval-production-traffic-replay no vendor
- architecture-deployment-locus ide vendor
- licensing-bucket commercial vendor
- positioning-platform-vs-product product vendor
- taxonomy-three-layer-rollup agent-infra repo
- protocol-support mcp-client vendor
What changed
Changes to this record's lifecycle, licence, release, pricing and hosting facts, from the catalog's git history. Subscribe (Atom)
- 2026-10-23
- Name “Windsurf Rules & Memories” → “Windsurf Rules & Memories (now Devin Desktop)”
- Homepage “https://docs.windsurf.com/windsurf/cascade/memories” → “https://docs.devin.ai/desktop/cascade/memories”
- Funding / ownership “not applicable — not commercial” → “not applicable — feature of Devin Desktop; Windsurf acquired by Cognition (definitive agreement 2025-07, terms undisclosed)” source