Kiro

Kiro is Amazon's spec-driven agentic integrated development environment, announced May 2026 as the official replacement for the Amazon Q Developer IDE plugin. Amazon blocked new Q Developer IDE plugin signups from May 15, 2026, with full plugin support ending April 30, 2027. Kiro represents Amazon's strategic repositioning in developer AI tooling — moving from an AI assistant that augments developer workflows into an agent that executes software development from high-level specifications.

The core concept in Kiro is Specs. A Spec is a natural-language document that describes requirements, architecture decisions, and implementation constraints for a feature or system component. Rather than writing code directly, developers write a Spec describing what they want to build. Kiro's agent reads the Spec and autonomously generates the full implementation — creating files, writing functions, handling edge cases, and wiring components together. The Spec serves as a persistent, version-controllable artifact that explains what the code does and why — bridging the gap between business requirements and implementation.

Hooks are Kiro's event-driven automation layer. Hooks fire on file system events such as file save or git commit, triggering automated agent actions. On file save, a Hook might run tests against the changed file, lint for style issues, or update related documentation. On commit, a Hook might run a full security scan, update a changelog, or verify that the implementation still aligns with the relevant Spec. Hooks allow teams to embed quality gates and automation directly into the development lifecycle without external CI/CD configuration.

Kiro is built as a VS Code-compatible IDE, meaning existing VS Code extensions, keybindings, and workspace configurations are compatible without migration. The agent layer runs on Amazon Bedrock, giving it access to Claude, Amazon Nova, and other foundation models available through Bedrock. Deep AWS integration enables Kiro to directly provision infrastructure, query AWS service configurations, and deploy to AWS environments within the development workflow.

Kiro is available in freemium form. A free tier supports individual developers with limited agent usage. Paid tiers are available for teams and enterprises. Kiro is best for software engineers and teams working in AWS-centric environments who want an agent that can execute full implementation from structured requirements with built-in quality automation.