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What is a Golden Snapshot?

A golden snapshot is an enterprise-wide machine template that ensures every organization in your enterprise starts with the same pre-configured environment. Rather than having each team independently set up their machine with shared tools, dependencies, and standards, a golden snapshot lets you define that baseline once and distribute it everywhere. A snapshot is the saved state of Devin’s virtual machine. Every Devin session starts by booting a fresh copy of a snapshot. For details on how snapshots work and how to configure repositories on a machine, see the repository setup guide.

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How do Golden Snapshots work?

A golden snapshot is created and managed at the Enterprise level. Once configured, other organizations within the enterprise can inherit the golden snapshot — this creates a copy of the snapshot in that organization and sets it as their default. Every team across the enterprise can then start from the same baseline without repeating setup work.

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Setting up a Golden Snapshot

Enterprise administrators with the Manage Account Snapshots permission can create a golden snapshot:
  1. Navigate to the Machine settings page at the Enterprise level
  2. Click Configure to open the machine environment
  3. Install the shared tools, compilers, and dependencies that all organizations in your enterprise should have access to
  4. Configure any environment variables, shell settings, or startup commands that should be shared
  5. Click Save when you’re done
When the snapshot is committed, it is saved as the enterprise’s golden snapshot and becomes available for other organizations to inherit.
Think of the golden snapshot as your enterprise’s “day one developer workstation.” Install everything that every team needs — language runtimes, build tools, shared internal packages, and common CLI utilities — so individual organizations don’t have to.

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Inheriting a Golden Snapshot

Organizations within the enterprise can inherit the golden snapshot to adopt the enterprise-wide environment as their default. To inherit:
  1. Navigate to the organization’s Machine settings page
  2. Select the option to inherit the enterprise’s golden snapshot
  3. The golden snapshot is copied into the organization and automatically set as its default
When inherited, the snapshot appears with (Inherited) appended to its name. All future Devin sessions in that organization will boot from this snapshot.

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Auto-inheritance for new organizations

New organizations created within the enterprise can auto-inherit the golden snapshot. This means newly onboarded teams are immediately ready to work with the same tooling and configuration as the rest of the enterprise — no manual setup required.

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What gets inherited?

The inherited snapshot is a full copy of the golden snapshot, including:
  • All cloned repositories and their contents
  • Installed tools, compilers, and package managers
  • Package dependencies (node_modules, venvs, etc.)
  • Environment variables and shell configuration
  • Startup commands that run at the beginning of each session
  • Browser cookies from any sites configured during setup

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Customizing after inheritance

Individual organizations can still customize their environment on top of the inherited snapshot. After inheriting, an organization can:
  • Add organization-specific repositories through the repository setup flow
  • Install additional tools or dependencies
  • Configure organization-specific environment variables or secrets
  • Adjust startup commands for their workflows
These customizations only affect that organization’s snapshot and do not modify the enterprise golden snapshot.
If the enterprise golden snapshot is updated later, organizations can re-inherit to pick up the latest changes. This will replace their current default snapshot.

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Tips and Tricks

  1. Install all shared compilers, package managers, and build tools in the golden snapshot so individual organizations never have to.
  2. Keep shared dependency installation commands in the “Maintain dependencies” field so they run automatically at the start of each session.
  3. Use the golden snapshot for tools and configuration that are universal across your enterprise. Leave organization-specific setup (like individual repo cloning) to each org’s own repository setup.
  4. Periodically update the golden snapshot as your enterprise tooling evolves, and notify organizations to re-inherit for the latest baseline.