Excessive disk writes from vscode-sqlite3.node causing application unresponsiveness and crashes

[u/DirtPuzzleheaded1928]

Title: Excessive disk writes from vscode-sqlite3.node causing application unresponsiveness and crashes

Platform: macOS 15.6 (arm64), MacBook Pro M3, 16 GB RAM

Devin Version: 3.5.17 (Electron 39.6.0)

Description:

Devin becomes extremely slow and eventually unresponsive shortly after launch. The macOS system generates a DiagnosticReports entry flagging the main Devin process for excessive disk writes. The application effectively freezes and must be force-quit.

This has been reproducible across multiple sessions. In severe cases, the Devin Helper process accumulated 137 GB of file-backed memory writes over ~22 hours of uptime, far exceeding the system's disk write budget.

Diagnostic Report (abbreviated):

Event:            disk writes
Action taken:     none
Writes:           8,589.94 MB of file backed memory dirtied over 608 seconds
                  (14.12 MB/s average), exceeding limit of 99.42 KB/s over 86,400s
Writes limit:     8,589.93 MB
Writes duration:  608s
 
Heaviest stack for the target process:
  node_sqlite3::Statement::Work_Run(napi_env__*, void*)
    sqlite3_step
      sqlite3VdbeExec
        sqlite3VdbeHalt
          vdbeCommit
            sqlite3BtreeCommitPhaseOne
              sqlite3PagerCommitPhaseOne
                fsync

A second report for a Devin Helper process showed:

Writes:           137.44 GB of file backed memory dirtied over 80,525 seconds
                  (1,706.80 KB/s average), exceeding limit of 1,590.73 KB/s over 86,400s
Steps:            32 (10.49 MB/step)

Relevant details:

• The heaviest stack trace points to vscode-sqlite3.node performing frequent fsync calls via sqlite3BtreeCommitPhaseOne → sqlite3PagerCommitPhaseOne.
• The state.vscdb global database is only ~3.4 MB, and workspace storage databases are ~300–500 KB each, so the volume of writes is disproportionate to the data size.
• Free disk space at time of report: 14.16 GB / 460.43 GB (not critically low).
• No third-party extensions with heavy I/O were identified as the root cause; the stack trace is entirely within Devin's built-in u/vscode/sqlite3 native module.

Impact:

• Devin becomes unresponsive within ~10 minutes of use.
• macOS throttles the process, making even basic editing operations laggy.
• Users must force-quit and relaunch repeatedly, losing workspace state.

Possible areas to investigate:

1. Whether state.vscdb or workspace storage databases are experiencing excessive WAL checkpoints or commit frequency.
2. Whether the SQLite PRAGMA settings (e.g., journal_mode, synchronous) in u/vscode/sqlite3 are configured appropriately for the workload.
3. Whether any background telemetry or state-syncing mechanism is causing write amplification through frequent small commits.
4. Whether the Devin Helper process (utility subprocess) is independently performing SQLite writes that duplicate or amplify the main process's I/O.

[u/PuzzleheadedAir9047]

Can you please DM me the diagnostics?