SWE-1 is Windsurf's new generation of AI models that are tailor-made for software development—not coding itself, but software development overall. Say goodbye to Waves 9 in Windsurf's latest version, SWE-1 is a radical departure from the typical coding assistants by morphing to accelerate software development by up to 99%. Backed by a talented team and rumored to be among the assets in a multi-billion-dollar acquisition deal, Windsurf is making SWE-1 a frontier-level AI model tuned to developer workflows in real-world environments.
What Does It Do
SWE-1 is not a run-of-the-mill code-generating AI. It's designed to understand and assist with the full range of software engineering activities—code creation, code review, debugging, project planning, and maintaining context over extended development periods. Unlike general-purpose AI models that are trained for programming, SWE-1 was explicitly created from the ground up to be used in tandem with incomplete codebases, multi-step operations, and cross-tool interactions such as terminal commands, clipboard content, and IDE searches. Such flow awareness enables the AI to establish an continuous understanding of the developer's environment and actions and thus emerge as a true software engineering partner rather than a code generator.
SWE-1 family includes three models:
SWE-1: The flagship model providing frontier-class performance for advanced thinking and tool operation.
SWE-1-lite: A smaller, more performant model replacing Windsurf's Cascade Base with improved quality.
SWE-1-mini: A very light weight model propelling passive code forecasting in the Windsurf Tab experience.
Pricing
Windsurf distributes SWE-1 models within its platform with different degrees of access:
SWE-1 is available to all subscribers, providing the most feature-full capability.
SWE-1-lite and SWE-1-mini are available to all free or pay users, providing wide spread availability.
While specific price points or subscription levels were not mentioned in the sources, Windsurf's approach suggests a freemium model where the top features have paid tiers and less intensive versions are free. No free trial or money-back guarantee was hinted at, but the existence of multiple model levels allows users to be able to utilize the benefits of the AI to some degree at different levels of engagement.
Product History
Windsurf, formerly Codeium, has continued to expand on its AI coding features in successive releases. Wave 9 is a milestone release with the inclusion of SWE-1, the first family of frontier-level AI models developed by the company to support software engineering. The release shows a shift from code generation towards an integrated software engineering assistant that captures the entire development cycle. SWE-1 was heavily trained in-house on a novel data model capturing sequential engineering tasks and work in-progress states. Early internal benchmarks and field tests in actual production show SWE-1 competing with top-performing base AI models, though Windsurf couches it as a specialized, not a general-purpose, solution.
Summary
The SWE-1 review reveals a revolutionary family of AI models revolutionizing what AI can do for software engineering. By covering the entire development cycle and introducing flow awareness, SWE-1 promises to greatly speed up engineering processes without sacrificing quality or context. Ongoing development and only optimized to date for the Windsurf platform, SWE-1's cutting-edge performance and innovative approach make it more appealing to developers looking for something more than a code-generation tool. If you wish to stay ahead of the curve for AI-based software coding, exploring SWE-1 on Windsurf is worth it. For more information, refer to other articles regarding AI coding tools and software engineering practices in our blog.
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