Two frequent Devin headaches — pull requests that miss the mark and App Store rejections downstream — with practical fixes and prevention for iOS teams.
This guide tackles two problems iOS teams hit with Devin. First: the pull request Devin produces is off-target — wrong scope, wrong approach, or subtly incorrect.
Second, further downstream: an app containing agent-written code gets rejected in App Store review. These feel different but share a root cause — insufficient human direction and verification.
Devin is autonomous and capable, but it acts on the instructions and context you give it, and it can't judge Apple's review standards for you.
Fix both by tightening how you scope tasks, how you review PRs, and how you keep releases inside Apple's rules. Let's take each in turn.
Both problems are, at heart, about where human judgment enters the loop. When it enters early and often — in scoping, in review, in a guideline check before submission — both failure modes shrink dramatically.
The most common reason a Devin PR misses is a vague prompt. Given an ambiguous ticket, an autonomous agent fills gaps with assumptions — and its assumptions may not be yours.
Over-scoped tasks compound this. A sprawling 'redesign the settings experience' invites a sprawling, hard-to-review PR that's likely to go sideways.
Fix it by rewriting the task as a tight ticket: specific feature, specific files or modules, explicit acceptance criteria, and clear constraints on style and dependencies.
Smaller, sharper tasks produce sharper PRs. If a PR came back wrong, the fastest fix is usually to re-scope and re-run rather than to wrestle the bad diff into shape.
A practical habit is to draft the prompt, then reread it as if you were the agent with no prior context. Any place where you would have to guess is a place Devin will guess too, and tightening those spots before you submit prevents most off-target results.
Devin learns your project by reading it. If your conventions, architecture, and patterns aren't documented, Devin guesses — and guesses drift from your house style.
A PR that ignores your established patterns often means the patterns weren't discoverable in the repo. That's fixable on your side.
Add architecture notes, a contribution guide, and clear examples of the patterns you want followed. Reference those patterns explicitly in prompts ('follow the MVVM approach used in ProfileView').
The better Devin can infer your intent from the repository, the less its output will surprise you. Context is leverage.
Pointing Devin at a concrete exemplar in your own codebase is often more effective than describing a pattern in the abstract. A living file that already does things the right way communicates your conventions more precisely than a paragraph of prose ever could.
When a PR misses, resist the urge to silently fix everything yourself and lose the learning. Give Devin specific, actionable feedback in the PR or a follow-up.
Be concrete: 'this changed the wrong module,' 'you missed the error path,' 'don't add that dependency.' Precise feedback lets Devin correct efficiently.
For small deviations, a human tweak may be fastest. For structural misses, re-running with a better prompt often beats patching a flawed approach.
Always keep the human review gate firm. An off-target PR that gets caught in review is the system working — the danger is only when weak review lets bad code through.
Reframe an off-target PR as useful signal rather than wasted effort. It tells you where your prompt or your repo documentation left room for the wrong assumption, and closing that gap improves every task that follows.
Devin writes code; it does not know or enforce Apple's App Store Review Guidelines. A change can be technically correct and still lead to rejection.
A classic trap: trying to shortcut real native engineering — for example, wrapping a website in a thin shell to pass it off as an app. Apple's guidelines discourage apps that are primarily repackaged websites without native value, and such apps risk rejection.
Other rejection triggers include privacy issues, missing required disclosures, using private APIs, or incomplete functionality — none of which an agent reliably polices.
So App Store compliance is a human responsibility. Devin's involvement doesn't reduce your obligation to meet Apple's rules; you must review releasable work against them yourself.
Because Devin optimizes for the task you gave it and not for Apple's standards, compliance risk is invisible to it by construction. Only a human who knows the guidelines can catch a change that is technically fine but destined for rejection.
If you're rejected, read Apple's rejection notice carefully — it cites the specific guideline. Map the problem to a concrete change and address that root cause.
If the issue stems from an approach Devin took, treat it as a scoping and review failure: the requirement to meet Apple's rules should have been in the plan and checked in review.
Prevent recurrences by reviewing all user-facing and release-bound work against the App Store Review Guidelines before submission. Build that check into your process.
And never rely on an agent, wrapper, or automation to certify App Store compliance. Real native functionality, honest privacy handling, and human review against the guidelines are what get apps approved.
If a rejection surprises you, respond through the resolution center to clarify or appeal where you genuinely believe the reviewer erred, but fix the underlying issue first. Treating each rejection as a permanent lesson in your pre-submission checklist is what keeps them rare.
Scope tightly: every Devin task is a specific ticket with acceptance criteria, named modules, and explicit constraints. Vague in, vague out.
Document your codebase so Devin can infer intent, and reference your patterns directly in prompts. Context prevents off-target work before it starts.
Review every PR as untrusted, checking scope, correctness, tests, and — for release-bound changes — App Store guideline compliance. Keep that gate strong no matter how fast you're moving.
And keep the Apple-specific pipeline human: build, sign, device-test, and submit through Xcode and App Store Connect with an Apple Developer Program membership. Devin accelerates authoring; humans own quality and compliance.
Write this playbook down where your team can see it and revisit it when something slips through. A checklist that grows with each lesson learned is what turns individual vigilance into a durable, repeatable process.
Both failure modes come from over-trusting autonomy. Devin is a powerful assistant, not an oracle and not an Apple release manager.
Give it clear direction and rich context, and it produces strong, on-target PRs. Leave it to guess, and it produces plausible work that misses your intent or Apple's rules.
Treat its output as a proposal that your review, your Xcode build, your device testing, and your guideline check must validate before anything ships.
Hold that mindset and off-target PRs get caught early while App Store rejections become rare. You get the speed of delegation without inheriting the risks of blind trust.
The teams that succeed with Devin are not the ones that trust it most; they are the ones that direct it best and verify it consistently. Autonomy is a multiplier on your process, so a strong process makes it an asset and a weak one makes it a liability.
Usually because the task prompt was vague or over-scoped, or your codebase lacked documented conventions for Devin to follow. Rewrite the task as a tight ticket with acceptance criteria and named modules, and add architecture and style docs to the repo so Devin can infer your intent.
No. Devin writes code but does not know or enforce Apple's App Store Review Guidelines. Compliance — genuine native functionality, privacy disclosures, avoiding private APIs and thin web wrappers — is a human responsibility you must verify before submission.
For small deviations, a quick human fix is often fastest. For structural misses, give Devin specific feedback and re-run, since patching a flawed approach can cost more than regenerating it. Either way, keep the human review gate firm.
Devin can't see Apple's rules, so if a rejection stems from an approach it took, that's a scoping and review gap on your side. Read Apple's cited guideline, fix the root cause, and add a guideline-compliance review to your process before future submissions.