# Morgante ⚡ Pell

![Morgante ⚡ Pell](/resources/cognition/portraits/morgante-pell.webp)

Leads Windsurf / Devin Desktop at Cognition; founder of Grit (acq. by Honeycomb), creator of GritQL, ex-Google Cloud  
Cognition  
San Francisco Bay Area

## At Cognition

- Role: Member of Technical Staff (Engineering)
- Joined: Dec 2025
- How they joined: Directly
- Overlapped before Cognition with other Cognition people at: Google (https://www.autumn.ai/resources/cognition/worked-together)

## Identity
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/morgante
- X: @morgantepell
- GitHub: https://github.com/morgante
- Website: https://www.morgante.net/

## Notes
- Member of Technical Staff at Cognition since Dec 2025; his LinkedIn role description reads 'Leading Windsurf', the agentic IDE Cognition acquired in July 2025. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/morgante)
- Word for word: 'We rewrote Devin Desktop to use the same design and rendering system as Devin Cloud, while preserving full local agent compatibility.  It took millions of tokens, but the result is worth it: the UX is 10x better than Windsurf used to be.' (https://x.com/morgantepell/status/2113744834553139376)
- Announced the rebrand word for word: 'RIP Windsurf, long live Devin Desktop.' (https://x.com/morgantepell/status/2061893121806618755)
- Honeycomb acquired Grit in April 2025, its first-ever acquisition. The Grit product was shut down and GritQL stayed open source. His quote: 'Grit built a powerful codebase analysis engine, but truly understanding software requires observing how it runs in production, and Honeycomb is the best observability platform out there.' (https://www.honeycomb.io/blog/honeycomb-acquires-grit)
- Founded Grit in New York in 2022, about nine months before ChatGPT launched. Grit built AI agents plus static analysis that open pull requests on their own to handle code migrations and technical debt. (https://www.heavybit.com/library/podcasts/o11ycast/ep-82-automating-developer-toil-with-morgante-pell-of-grit)
- X profile, word for word: 'I joined @cognition to build this. Devin + Windsurf brings the best cloud agent right to your IDE. Introducing Windsurf 2.0.' (https://x.com/morgantepell?lang=en)
- Acts as a hands-on product owner in public replies, for example 'What's missing for you in Devin? I'll ship it.' Replying on X is a direct way to reach him with product feedback. (https://x.com/morgantepell/status/2079704015827521881)
- Word for word: 'Lots of teams are building their own agents on specialized knowledge/context, but don't have a great UX for managing them all in one place.  Devin Desktop solves that by embracing open standards as the *primary* way to interact with all agents.' (https://x.com/morgantepell/status/2062315716104339837)
- Word for word: 'Devin went from doing <20% of my PRs last year to 95% today.' (https://x.com/morgantepell/status/2045222970466226301)
- Cognition signed a definitive agreement to acquire Windsurf (IP, product, trademark and brand) in July 2025. Pell joined about five months later and runs the acquired IDE. (https://cognition.com/blog/windsurf)
- Open source: created GritQL, a query language for searching, linting and modifying code, now hosted at biomejs/gritql. He published a release on Mar 26, 2025. (https://github.com/biomejs/gritql/releases)
- Grit raised a $7M seed round led by John Luttig (Founders Fund) and Ramtin N. (Abstract Ventures). Angel investors included Guillermo Rauch, Scott Belsky, Michael Grinich and Sahil Bloom. (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/morgante_introducing-grit-activity-7097254763808854016-YN9v)
- At Google Cloud from 2017 to 2022 (Strategic Cloud Engineer, then Senior Staff Architect, New York) he worked on Cloud Foundation Toolkit / terraform-google-modules infrastructure-as-code templates. (https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/devops-sre/google-cloud-templates-for-terraform-and-deployment-manager-now-available)
- On o11ycast, word for word: 'So at the time I was working at Google, working on Google Cloud's various API services and Terraform providers and all the time was struggling with the fact that we kept breaking our APIs, right?' That frustration led him to start Grit. (https://www.heavybit.com/library/podcasts/o11ycast/ep-82-automating-developer-toil-with-morgante-pell-of-grit)
- Word for word: 'Devin Fusion just got even better.  Use your ChatGPT subscription directly in Devin to power the Astra lead, while a free SWE-2 sidekick executes all the work.' (https://x.com/morgantepell/status/2104997039390281776)
- Word for word: 'Devin is your developer, but also your devbox.  I haven't set up a local development environment in months: even when I need to edit things myself, I just connect directly to the environment Devin already has configured.' (https://x.com/morgantepell/status/2102129097543696602)
- Replying to a Cursor comparison, word for word: 'Would love you to try Devin Desktop. We actually trained a new tab model earlier this year.' (https://x.com/morgantepell/status/2077968238059909522)
- Word for word: 'Devin Review is my secret weapon for avoiding slop PRs.  Now it's available for all Windsurf users, directly in the IDE.'. (https://x.com/morgantepell/status/2052103409784983689)
- His acquisition post: 'After many conversations (starting in 2023) it made sense to join forces.' Honeycomb CEO and cofounder Christine Yen welcomed him. (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/morgante_im-excited-to-share-that-grit-has-been-acquired-activity-7316162975705255936-5XJt)
- Word for word: 'Thanks for the partnership! Excited to see how people use E2B with Devin.' (reply to E2B cofounder @mlejva) (https://x.com/morgantepell/status/2079617756975214730)
- Word for word: 'GLM 5.2 is the first open weights model I've found to be good at high level planning.  Now it's free in Devin Desktop/CLI.' (https://x.com/morgantepell/status/2069919614860226771)
- Spoke at AI Engineer World's Fair 2024 as Grit CEO (talk: 'Code Generation and Maintenance at Scale'). (https://swyx.io/aiewf-2024)
- As an NYU Abu Dhabi freshman he took third place at the 2013 NYUAD Hackathon with teammates Oleg Grishin and Moiri Gamboni. (https://nyuad.nyu.edu/en/news/latest-news/science-and-technology/2013/february/NYUAD-Hackathon-Welcomes-Programmers-from-Around-the-Globe.html)
- Early career: Business Insider software engineer (2013-14, analytics infrastructure), first employee and VP Technology at Some Spider (2014-15), and owner of the web shop MasterMade from 2007. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/morgante)
- Reposted the Oct 2026 funding announcement from founder Hugo Santos, adding: 'AI is pushing every other stage of the SDLC to its limits, and I can't think of any other founder better suited to tackle the infra problems that creates than Hugo Santos.' (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/morgante_today-im-excited-to-share-that-weve-raised-activity-7512989325391761408-hb7w)
- Blog posts: 'Your CI pipeline isn't ready for AI' (Oct 8, 2024) and 'The return of personalized computing and the coming build vs. buy convergence' (Oct 27, 2022). (https://blog.morgante.net/)
- Spoke at Google Cloud Next '19 (session OPS210) on repeatable GCP environments using Cloud Build infrastructure-as-code pipelines. (https://hostingjournalist.com/video/repeatable-gcp-environments-at-scale-with-cloud-build-infra-as-code-pipelines-cloud-next-19)
- Named a hackNY Fellow, class of 2013, representing NYU Abu Dhabi. (https://hackny.org/blog/2013/06/hackny-announces-the-class-of-2013-hackny-fellows)
- Grit was picked for Comcast NBCUniversal LIFT Labs' enterprise AI accelerator. (https://lift.comcast.com/comcast-nbcuniversal-lift-labs-selects-10-startups-for-accelerator-on-emerging-enterprise-ai-solutions/)
- Personal site describes him as a technical entrepreneur from Vermont, known from Some Spider, Business Insider, NYU Abu Dhabi and Google Cloud. (https://www.morgante.net/)

## Experience
- Member of Technical Staff at Cognition - San Francisco Bay Area (Dec 2025 - Present): Leading Windsurf
- Head of AI at honeycomb.io (Mar 2025 - Dec 2025): Leading development of Honeycomb's AI features
- Founder at Grit (May 2022 - Apr 2025): We make software modernization and maintenance effortless.

By combining powerful static analysis and large language models, Grit autonomously opens pull requests to clear out your technical debt backlog.
- Senior Staff Architect at Google - Greater New York City Area (Sep 2017 - May 2022): Led the development of multiple infrastructure-as-code tools and onboarding products that are adopted by the majority of Google Cloud customers ($1B+ revenue). Wore many hats.
- Owner and Developer at MasterMade (Jun 2007 - Sep 2017): Led the design and development of web apps for clients ranging from international corporations to local nonprofits.
- VP Technology & Lead Product Architect at Some Spider - Greater New York City Area (Mar 2014 - Aug 2015): I was the first employee at Some Spider and led the technology team as we grew to reach millions of users every month.
- Software Engineer at Business Insider - New York, NY (Jun 2013 - Mar 2014): Led the development of a new, scaleable analytics infrastructure on MongoDB and StatsD.
Improved site performance 40% by refactoring all JavaScript code to use module-based design patterns.
Optimized PHP codebase around Zend Framework.

## Education
- New York University Abu Dhabi - Bachelor of Arts - BA, Computer Science

## Sources
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/morgante
- https://www.honeycomb.io/blog/honeycomb-acquires-grit
- https://ai.engineer/speakers/morgante-pell
- https://x.com/morgantepell
- https://www.morgante.net/
- https://hackny.org/blog/2013/06/hackny-announces-the-class-of-2013-hackny-fellows
- https://nyuad.nyu.edu/en/news/latest-news/science-and-technology/2013/february/NYUAD-Hackathon-Welcomes-Programmers-from-Around-the-Globe.html
- https://www.linkedin.com/posts/honeycomb.io_honeycomb-observability-honeycombintelligence-activity-7405316765792096258-kyyb
- https://cognition.com/blog/windsurf
- https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/devops-sre/google-cloud-templates-for-terraform-and-deployment-manager-now-available
- https://swyx.io/aiewf-2024
- https://github.com/biomejs/gritql/releases
- https://www.linkedin.com/posts/morgante_introducing-grit-activity-7097254763808854016-YN9v
- https://hostingjournalist.com/video/repeatable-gcp-environments-at-scale-with-cloud-build-infra-as-code-pipelines-cloud-next-19
- https://www.heavybit.com/library/podcasts/o11ycast/ep-82-automating-developer-toil-with-morgante-pell-of-grit
- https://lift.comcast.com/comcast-nbcuniversal-lift-labs-selects-10-startups-for-accelerator-on-emerging-enterprise-ai-solutions/
- https://www.linkedin.com/posts/morgante_im-excited-to-share-that-grit-has-been-acquired-activity-7316162975705255936-5XJt
- https://blog.morgante.net/
- https://x.com/morgantepell?lang=en
- https://github.com/morgante
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/morgante?miniProfileUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afsd_profile%3AACoAAACClUQBFsAlYLJ4as2bRxnTog9fvXvf_LE
- https://medium.com/@morgantepell/getting-started-with-using-anthos-for-application-management-f74e6db74afa
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ve-akpov78Q
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-rAy2yAbwU
- https://venturebeat.com/business/grit-debuts-with-7m-round-offering-ai-that-auto-analyzes-and-updates-software-codebase-for-devs
- https://www.finsmes.com/2025/04/honeycomb-acquires-grit.html
- https://x.com/morgantepell/status/2113744834553139376
- https://x.com/morgantepell/status/2061893121806618755
- https://x.com/morgantepell/status/2079704015827521881
- https://x.com/morgantepell/status/2062315716104339837
- https://x.com/morgantepell/status/2045222970466226301
- https://x.com/morgantepell/status/2104997039390281776
- https://x.com/morgantepell/status/2102129097543696602
- https://x.com/morgantepell/status/2077968238059909522
- https://x.com/morgantepell/status/2052103409784983689
- https://x.com/morgantepell/status/2079617756975214730
- https://x.com/morgantepell/status/2069919614860226771
- https://www.linkedin.com/posts/morgante_today-im-excited-to-share-that-weve-raised-activity-7512989325391761408-hb7w


Researched with Autumn (https://www.autumn.ai) from public sources. Updated 2026-11-04. Profile: https://www.autumn.ai/resources/cognition/people/morgante-pell · Everyone at Cognition: https://www.autumn.ai/resources/cognition/people