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Get your Devin Desktop rules into Cline

Moving rules between providers isn’t limited to the big two. This guide takes rules from Devin Desktop (formerly Windsurf) into Cline — the same four-step flow works for any supported pair.

What you need

Section titled “What you need”
  • syllago installed and initialized (syllago init)
  • Devin Desktop with at least one rule configured (.windsurf/rules/ or .windsurfrules)

1. Import from Devin Desktop

Section titled “1. Import from Devin Desktop”
Terminal window
# See what's available first
syllago add --from devin


# Import all rules
syllago add rules --from devin

2. Review what was imported

Section titled “2. Review what was imported”
Terminal window
syllago list --type rules

Each imported rule is now a canonical item in your library, independent of Devin Desktop.

3. Preview the install

Section titled “3. Preview the install”
Terminal window
syllago install my-rule --to cline --dry-run

Nothing is written yet — the dry run shows the target paths and the converted content.

4. Install to Cline

Section titled “4. Install to Cline”
Terminal window
syllago install my-rule --to cline

Cline is a project-scoped provider: syllago writes into the current project’s Cline config rather than a global directory, so run this from the project where you want the rule active.

5. Verify it worked

Section titled “5. Verify it worked”

Cline reads rules from .clinerules in the project (and ~/Documents/Cline/Rules globally):

Terminal window
ls .clinerules/

Format differences to know about

Section titled “Format differences to know about”

Both providers use Markdown rules, so the content itself carries over cleanly. The frontmatter differs: Devin Desktop supports trigger, description, and globs; Cline’s rule format only expresses file scoping (its paths field, which syllago maps to and from globs). Devin Desktop-specific activation metadata like trigger: manual has no Cline equivalent — syllago warns when a field will degrade in translation, and you can check ahead of time with syllago compat.

Section titled “Related”