Kiro
Summary
AWS's spec-driven IDE: prompts become requirements, design docs, and tracked tasks before any code is generated.
Description
Kiro is AWS's agentic IDE, built around a simple critique of vibe coding — that generated code without a specification is unmaintainable. Kiro inserts the specification step and keeps it in the repository.
Spec-driven development
Give Kiro a prompt and it produces three artefacts before writing code:
- Requirements as user stories with acceptance criteria
- A design document covering architecture, interfaces, and data flow
- A task list sequenced so each item is independently reviewable
You edit any of them, and the implementation follows the spec rather than the original one-line prompt. The spec stays in the repo as living documentation that the next task builds on.
Beyond specs
- Hooks trigger agent actions on events — regenerate docs on save, add tests when a function is created, run a security check before commit.
- Steering files encode project conventions the agent must follow.
- MCP support connects external tools and data.
- Familiar base. Open VS Code projects, extensions, and settings directly.
Free tier available, with paid tiers for higher agent usage; runs on macOS, Windows, and Linux.
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