The moderator role
Welcome to the Cognition moderation team. This agreement sets the shared operating baseline for volunteer moderators before moderator access is granted. It explains the moderator role, the standards for good standing, how common issues are routed, and how shifts and handoffs work.
Cognition's Discord supports engineers, AI builders, and power users using Devin. Moderators are active stewards of that space. Your job is to enforce the officially published server rules while keeping the community friendly, organized, technically useful, and aligned with what members can see.
The role involves welcoming members, answering common questions, routing technical or sensitive issues to the right place, using judgment in public channels, and handing off cleanly when your active window ends.
We moderate the way a healthy engineering team operates: with context, good judgment, timely action, and respect for each other's time.
This is a living agreement maintained by Jason as the Moderation Lead. If anything here is unclear, ask before you sign.
Moderator access and operating context
To perform the role effectively, moderators receive the access and context needed to support the community:
Moderator role
A high-visibility moderator role with associated permissions.
Private context
Access to private moderator channels and operational context.
Devin Max plan
Devin Max plan access while active and in good standing.
This access is contingent on active participation, good judgment, product fluency, and accurate communication about Devin's current capabilities. If your capacity or availability changes, that is understood, but use the availability process below so the team can plan around it.
Core expectations
| Expectation | What good standing looks like |
|---|---|
| Engage with the community | Greet new members, help them feel welcome, and keep conversations positive, on-topic, and within the server rules. |
| Answer and route accurately | Answer common questions clearly and politely. Route technical support requests to #get-help first so the user can provide the needed details and regular channels stay clear. If you are not sure, say so and route the user to official documentation, support, staff, or another moderator rather than guessing. |
| Enforce visible rules fairly | Enforce #rules-and-info consistently, match the action to the severity and user history, and stay neutral when explaining decisions. |
| Escalate when needed | Bring issues above your authority, staff-decision items, safety issues, account matters, legal risk, and uncertain calls to Discord #staff-chat. |
| Stay available and hand off cleanly | Use the shift commands, be present during active windows, and leave clear ownership or context before you end a shift. |
When communicating about Devin, base product guidance on official documentation, publicly announced product updates and promotional materials from Cognition, Cognition staff guidance, and your own current product use. Do not promise bug fixes, timelines, refunds, account actions, feature availability, roadmap outcomes, or unreleased product behavior.
For technical support, send users to #get-help as the first step rather than continuing the support exchange in regular channels. Ask them to include their OS, Devin Desktop version or Windsurf version on older builds, the model used, clear steps to reproduce, logs, and screenshots when possible. Remind them to remove credentials, tokens, private code, customer data, and other sensitive material before sharing anything.
Rules and routing
The canonical, member-facing ruleset is the one pinned in #rules-and-info by the Devin Desktop - Rules app, or the equivalent user-facing rules post or list if the server structure changes. If this document and the current user-facing rules ever disagree, the user-facing rules win. Flag the mismatch to #staff-chat.
Moderators are expected to keep up with the current user-facing rules so enforcement stays aligned with what members can see. The Moderation Lead will flag material changes in #staff-chat or the appropriate moderator channel.
Rule group from #rules-and-info | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Community expectations | Respect toward members, the team, and moderators. No harassment, hate, threats, spam, scams, or impersonation. Criticism is welcome; accusatory or false claims that go nowhere are not. |
| Privacy, IP, and content | No sharing private, proprietary, or confidential code, credentials, or customer data. Code generated by Devin Desktop or Devin Local is the user's responsibility. Do not repost or reuse others' content without explicit permission. |
| No advertising / self-promotion | No advertising services, paid help, servers, communities, or referral or affiliate links. No bumping by delete-and-repost. Shared tools must be genuinely helpful, clearly disclosed, and not a sales pitch. |
| Promotion | Advertising or shoutouts to other products require prior approval from the Devin team. |
Routing buckets
Common support and moderation situations use these routing buckets. When in doubt, escalate rather than guess.
| Route | Destination | What belongs here | Moderator responsibility |
|---|---|---|---|
| Route support | Discord #get-help |
Technical support requests, troubleshooting questions, bug reports needing reproduction details, and help requests that begin in regular channels. | Ask the user to create a post in #get-help before deeper troubleshooting. Keep regular channels clear, collect the needed details in one place, and continue only with brief public redirection unless immediate moderation or escalation is needed. |
| Act directly | Discord, using moderator tools | Clear rule violations: disrespect, harassment, hate, threats, impersonation, spam, scams, phishing, malware, raid bots, credentials or customer data posted publicly, content reuse without permission, advertising, referral links, bump reposts, ban evasion, or continued rule-breaking after a warning. | Delete, warn, timeout, use slowmode for temporary containment, or ban as severity and history require. Preserve user, channel, timestamp, message link when available, action taken, and reason for serious actions. |
| Escalate | Discord #staff-chat |
Threats of violence, self-harm, doxxing, illegal content, leaked credentials, confidential or proprietary code, customer data, promotion approval requests, harassment disputes needing judgment, suspected account compromise, billing, payment, refund, account-access problems, coordinated raids, brigading, legal risk, PR-sensitive issues, ban appeals, and anything outside your authority. | If the issue is dangerous or live, remove exposure or contain it first when you can do so safely, then escalate with non-sensitive context. Do not reverse another moderator's serious action or grant a ban appeal without staff or Moderation Lead review. |
| Surface product signal | Cognition Slack #community-product-feedback |
Meaningful bugs, reproducible issues, feature requests, recurring product pain points, notable user sentiment, and repeated documentation gaps. | Share patterns when they are useful to the product team. Do not use this channel for individual support or moderation incidents. |
Use standard moderation workflows so actions are captured by the Moderator Help app, #server-logs, and the Discord Server Moderation Audit Log. Use screenshots only when normal logs will not preserve the needed context.
Bannable without warning: scams, phishing, malware links, spam or raid bots, impersonation, doxxing, credible threats, leaked credentials, customer data, ban evasion, and illegal content. Act now, and also escalate to #staff-chat if the issue involves safety, privacy, law, or staff awareness.
Promotion is intentionally narrow. Advertising or shoutouts to other products are allowed only with prior Devin-team approval. If a user asks to promote something, route the request to #staff-chat.
Operational standards
These standards keep moderator work useful, private, and reviewable without turning support into a rigid script.
Account security
Protect your own moderator access. Use strong account security and MFA where available for Discord, Slack, and related moderator tooling. Keep private moderator context out of public channels. Report suspected compromise of your account or another moderator's account to #staff-chat or the Moderation Lead immediately.
Support, DMs, and sensitive data
Use #get-help as the first step for technical support so the user can provide the needed details, the community and next moderator can see the answer, and regular channels stay clear. If a support request starts elsewhere, give a brief redirect and ask the user to create a #get-help post before deeper troubleshooting.
You may move a support exchange to DM when discretion is needed, such as collecting diagnostics, screenshots, logs, or sensitive account context that should not be posted publicly.
When using DMs for support, keep the request narrow and ask only for the minimum information needed. Try to guide the user to avoid exposing credentials, API keys, tokens, private code, customer data, billing details, and other sensitive materials when sharing logs or screenshots. Do not ask users for passwords, session tokens, private keys, or full payment details.
If a user shares sensitive material anyway, do not repost it broadly. Avoid copying sensitive contents into summaries, and escalate the non-sensitive context to #staff-chat when staff needs to own the next step. Billing, refund, account-access, suspected-compromise, leaked-secret, and PII issues may start or move to DM for privacy, but staff or the Moderation Lead owns the final decision.
When the sensitive part is resolved, move the general answer or next step back to the public thread when that helps the community and does not expose private details.
Conflicts and recusal
If you are personally involved in a dispute, targeted by the user, or too heated to stay neutral, ask another moderator, #staff-chat, or the Moderation Lead to handle the enforcement call. If immediate safety action is needed, act first to contain the issue, then hand off review.
Keep conversations professional and contained. Do not turn public channels into debates about whether a moderator or user is right. If you need to correct or challenge a user beyond a brief factual clarification, move the exchange to DM when appropriate, focus on facts and next steps, and avoid trying to win the argument. If the user does not follow the recommended steps, direct them to #get-help, the Cognition support website, or a support request as appropriate, then disengage politely.
Serious incidents and appeals
For threats, self-harm, doxxing, illegal content, leaked credentials, or customer data, remove exposure first when you can do so safely, then escalate immediately to #staff-chat. Do not give legal, medical, or security advice beyond routing the issue to staff, official support, or the appropriate emergency or platform resources.
Ban appeals and serious enforcement disputes belong with staff or the Moderation Lead. Acknowledge that the appeal has been routed, avoid arguing the case in public, and do not reverse another moderator's serious action without review.
Shift commands
Coverage is tracked with simple Discord slash commands.
/shift startLogs you on duty, gives you the @Mod On Duty role, and adds you to the live dashboard.
/shift endLogs you off duty and clears your status.
/awayLogs an anticipated absence with an approximate return date, visible only to the Moderation Lead.
When you are on duty, the community can see you are active at a glance.
Clean Handoff Standard
The single most important teamwork expectation: no moderator should start their shift and find clear evidence that the previous window was neglected.
Before you end an active window, make sure each visible item has a clear owner, destination, or next step. Handle clear Discord issues before you leave, or leave a concise note explaining what remains.
#get-help, help threads needing a moderator reply, active rule-breaking, visible spam, scam links, phishing, malware, raid behavior, bot abuse, advertising, self-promotion, repost-bumping, or unresolved promotion requests.#staff-chatThreats, self-harm, doxxing, illegal content, leaked credentials, confidential or proprietary code, customer data, promotion requests waiting for Devin-team approval, account compromise, billing, payment, account access, ban appeals, long-running harassment disputes, or borderline enforcement calls.#community-product-feedbackBugs, reproducible product issues, valuable feature requests, recurring pain points, notable customer sentiment, product documentation issues, or other emergent user access issuesThe Clean Handoff Standard is about a good-faith effort to ensure that all visible issues are either resolved or clearly passed on to the next moderator.
Activity and availability
Be active in the server for at least 10 hours per week, spread across multiple check-ins, engaging with users, answering questions, and handling reports.
Avaiability is tracked through the shift bot tools. Use /shift start when you are actively covering the server, /shift end when that active window is over. This signals that you are available for moderation duties and are holding yourself accountable to the clean hand off standard during that shift. Use /away with an approximate return date when you will be unavailable for a while. Time marked with /away is treated as planned reduced availability
Meaningful contribution includes active #get-help support work and thoughtful surfacing of community sentiment to the Cognition Slack #community-product-feedback, in addition to visible enforcement actions in Discord. The goal is consistent, good-faith coverage rather than idling in the server to run up a number. The bot gives leadership clean visibility into who is on duty and who has communicated reduced availability.
Life and other obligations understandably can impact availability. If you cannot keep up your activity for a while, use /away so the team knows you are out.
Any change to role status, permissions, or Devin Max access is handled at the Moderation Lead's discretion based on the situation, your communication, and the needs of the community. Our intent is to ensure reliable Devin Discord moderator coverage and two-way communication.
Acknowledgment and sign-off
By signing below, I confirm that I have read and agree to these standards:
#rules-and-info or the equivalent user-facing rules post or list, and I understand those user-facing rules are the source of truth.#get-help first so users provide the needed details and regular channels stay clear.#staff-chat.#community-product-feedback and will not use that channel for individual support or moderation incidents./away process, and Capacity Check process, and that role, permission, or Devin Max access adjustments are handled at the Moderation Lead's discretion.Sign-off is recorded by the Moderation Lead before operational roles and Devin Max access are granted.