Try Devin on research tasks (mostly failed)
From the linked report, answer.AI gave Devin, which works through Slack in its own Docker environment with a browser, editor and shell, two tasks. One was grabbing an The builder's 25 most recent Google Scholar papers with Playwright, skipping paywalls. On the scraping task Devin got stuck parsing HTML and went to sleep.
- Agent or tool
- Devin
- Topic
- Research & Data
- Reported on
- Blog
- Added
- 2026-10-15
Why it matters
Research is mostly gathering, cleaning and comparing. Handing that groundwork to an agent leaves the person with the part that needs judgment: deciding what the findings mean. It is one of 67 sightings filed under Research & Data on Agent Sightings (number 48 by interest), and one of 20 involving Devin.
How you could try it
Here is a reusable prompt, written by us in our own words, that captures the task. Paste it into Devin or any similar agent and adjust the details to your situation.
Research brief: try Devin on research tasks (mostly failed). Prefer primary sources, include links and confidence notes, and do not contact anyone.
Tip: Start small: run it once on a low-stakes example, read what the agent did, and only then let it run on real work.
Source
Read the original first-hand account on Blog: https://www.answer.ai/posts/2025-01-08-devin.html. Our summary is a paraphrase; details are in the source.