Amazon Web Services launched Kiro, an integrated development environment (IDE) that uses AI agents to move from prompt to prototype to production.

In a blog post launching Kiro, AWS executives Nikhil Swaminathan and Deepak Singh explained that last production step is where applications often fall over.

Kiro is in line with AWS' approach to creating tools to make deployment easier. Kiro is an IDE that allows you to go from concept to prototype quickly via conversations about specifications and designs.

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"As a user, you interact with it, and it creates these specifications and designs which then make for very reliable, robust code over time," said Singh, who noted that Kiro rhymes with efforts like Amazon Connect, an AI-based customer service system and AWS Transform, which modernizes applications with AI agents.

Kiro was launched ahead of AWS Summit in New York, which is expected to feature a heavy dose of AI agent news. "Kiro is great at ‘vibe coding’ but goes way beyond that—Kiro’s strength is getting those prototypes into production systems with features such as specs and hooks," said Swaminathan and Singh.

Here's a look at Kiro components:

  • Kiro specs, which are artifacts that are useful for refactor work and upfront planning. Specs are designed to guide AI agents to better implementations.
  • Kiro hooks, which are automations that trigger an agent to execute a task in the background.

The AWS blog post walks through a few examples of Kiro specs and hooks and how they can move an application along to production.

In addition, Kiro includes code editor features as well as Model Context Protocol (MCP) support, agentic AI chat for coding, various plugins and steering rules and context generated from documentations.

According to AWS, Kiro is part of a broader vision to make building software easier, enterprise ready, eliminate technical debt and preserve institutional knowledge.

Constellation Research analyst Holger Mueller said:

"Software development and coding are not the same anymore in the era of genAI and it starts with AI agents plugging into the IDE, the 'couch in the developer living room'. The challenge is to find the right balance between in the background vs. in the face - to establish the coveted 'vibe' setup. We will see in a few weeks if Kiro got that right."