Kiro
Also known as: Kiro IDE, Kiro CLI, AWS Kiro
Kiro is an agentic development environment from AWS, available as an IDE, a CLI, and on the web, built for spec-driven development: it turns a feature request into requirements, a technical design, and implementation tasks before writing code. It supports steering files (including AGENTS.md), agent hooks, MCP servers, and an Autopilot mode that can create and modify files autonomously. AWS recommends Kiro as the successor to Amazon Q Developer.
Agent Information
- Provider
- Amazon Web Services
- Supported IDEs
- Kiro IDE, Terminal / CLI, Web
Feature Support Matrix
| Feature | Support Level | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Execution | ||
| Automatic Context Awareness | ✅ Full Support | Kiro automatically analyzes open files in the editor, including their dependencies and structure; #codebase lets it find... |
| Filesystem Access | ✅ Full Support | In Autopilot mode Kiro can create files, modify code across multiple locations, and run commands without asking for appr... |
| MCP Server Support | ✅ Full Support | MCP servers can be configured in workspace or user MCP configuration files and are supported across the IDE, CLI, and we... |
| Editor Integration | ||
| Broad IDE Integration | ✅ Full Support | Besides the Kiro IDE, CLI, Web, and Mobile apps, compatible editors such as JetBrains IDEs and Zed can use Kiro as their... |
| Model Support | ||
| Latest Claude Model Support | ✅ Full Support | Paid plans include Claude Sonnet 5, Claude Opus 5, Claude Opus 4.8, Claude Sonnet 4.6, and Claude Haiku 4.5, and Claude ... |
| Context Window Management | ✅ Full Support | The context window depends on the selected model; GPT-5.6 models support a 1 million token context window in Kiro. |
| Debugging | ||
| Console Error Integration | ❓ Unknown | Not documented: the full official documentation (https://kiro.dev/llms.txt) was searched on 2026-09-30 without finding t... |
| Interactive Element Selection | ❓ Unknown | Not documented: the full official documentation (https://kiro.dev/llms.txt) was searched on 2026-09-30 without finding t... |
| Live Web Preview | ❓ Unknown | Not documented: the full official documentation (https://kiro.dev/llms.txt) was searched on 2026-09-30 without finding t... |
| Configuration | ||
| Dedicated Instruction File | ✅ Full Support | Steering files in .kiro/steering/ provide persistent project guidance (for example product.md, tech.md, and structure.md... |
| Fine-Grained Instruction Control | ✅ Full Support | Steering files support inclusion modes: always, fileMatch with glob patterns (for example "components/**/*.tsx"), manual... |
| Supports Scoped Instructions | ✅ Full Support | Steering can be defined per workspace (.kiro/steering/) or globally (~/.kiro/steering/); workspace steering takes priori... |
| Planning | ||
| Planner Strategy | ✅ Full Support | Specs formalize planning into requirements, design, and implementation tasks with progress tracking before and during im... |
Frequently Asked Questions
Kiro offers Free ($0/month, 50 credits), Pro ($20/user/month, 1,000 credits), Pro+ ($40/user/month, 2,000 credits), Pro Max ($100/user/month, 5,000 credits), and Power ($200/user/month, 10,000 credits). Paid tiers can buy extra credits at $0.04 per credit. Credits are consumed across the IDE, CLI, and web. See https://kiro.dev/pricing/ for details.
Paid plans (Pro, Pro+, Pro Max, and Power) include Auto (an agent that uses a mix of frontier models), Claude Sonnet 5, Claude Opus 5, Claude Opus 4.8, Claude Sonnet 4.6, Claude Haiku 4.5, GPT-5.6 (Sol, Terra, and Luna, with a 1M token context window), and open-weight models such as DeepSeek 3.2, MiniMax M2.5, GLM-5, and Qwen3 Coder Next. Claude Opus 5.5 has been rolling out to paid plans since September 28, 2026 as an experimental model in selected AWS regions. Claude Fable 5.1 is available only to enterprise customers with Model Governance enabled. The Free plan includes Claude Sonnet 4.5 and open-weight models such as Qwen3 Coder Next, DeepSeek 3.2, and MiniMax M2.1.
Specs are structured artifacts that formalize the development of features and bug fixes. Kiro works through requirements (requirements.md), a technical design (design.md), and a list of implementation tasks (tasks.md) with built-in progress tracking.
AWS announced the end of support for the Amazon Q Developer IDE plugins and paid subscriptions: new signups were blocked on May 15, 2026, and support ends on April 30, 2027. AWS advises customers to transition to Kiro during that period.