Cognition
@cognition
92% of COBOL developers are expected to retire in the next four years, and 68% of enterprise COBOL modernizations are failing. Agents can help – we wrote up how: https://t.co/VPCjxFEaB8
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View on XCognition Deploys Devin to Automate Legacy COBOL Modernization for Fortune 500s
· Updated
Cognition, an applied AI lab building end-to-end software agents, revealed how its autonomous engineer Devin is modernizing COBOL systems at Fortune 500 companies. Using
DeepWiki, an indexing tool, Devin maps legacy codebases to trace data across program boundaries where logic relies on fixed memory positions rather than semantic variable names.This addresses the "COBOL cliff" as 92% of developers approach retirement. Most agents fail because they cannot execute COBOL in standard environments, breaking the agent loop (the iterative cycle of observing and acting). Devin overcomes this by recreating batch logic in modern languages to verify outputs, enabling successful migrations where 68% of manual efforts fail.
Enterprises can now use Devin for large-scale refactoring, documentation, and batch job migrations. While autonomous transactional migrations are still maturing, Devin can run hundreds of agents in parallel to accelerate supported tasks by up to 6x. Organizations can contact Cognition directly to explore modernization partnerships.
