Meet Kiro, a developer sitting inside an IDE to literally breeze you through projects from scratch and ship things faster than ever before.
I've been using Kiro for the last few days for my side projects and it's worked an absolute charm. Let me take you on a little tour of this AI-powered IDE.
Spoiler alert: It's a lot more than just code.
Opening the app makes it seem like you're in a themed version of VSCode - and you're not entirely wrong. It's essentially VSCode with a few additions that make it an entirely different beast.
I want you to look at two key features of this screen that'll allow me to give you an overview of what Kiro offers out of the box.
The Kiro Sidebar
This panel houses the key features of Kiro - Specs, Agent Hooks, Agent Steering and the MCP Servers. I'll talk each one of them in detail in upcoming blogs.
The Chat Panel
It's a classic chat window with two interesting modes - Vibe Coding and Code With Spec. I like how 'Vibe Coding' is the default version of the chat.
When you have a very open-ended idea of what you want to build and have no real constraints, this vibe coding mode allows Kiro to 'go crazy' on your prompts and do its thing.
On the other hand, if you know exactly what you're building, you can leverage the spec mode to describe the entire flow of things. Kiro creates 3 files - requirements.md, design.md and tasks.md and it will keep modifying those files as documentation while it asks you clarifying questions about what you want to build.
A layer of top of this is Agent Steering. When you enable agent steering for your project, you're providing Kiro added context about your project by default for every prompt. You can enable it from the Command Pallette. It creates 3 files - tech.md, structure.md and product.md that houses a proper outline of what you're building along with its nitty-gritty features that can be narrowed down to even variable naming styles. I feel that this gives you maximum control of your project.
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I can't wait to experiment more with Kiro and unlock its full potential.
Hope that was a good initial preview on what Kiro can bring to the table, and I'm sure there's a lot more on the way. There's no point in waiting, try it for yourself at kiro.dev! I'll see you in the next one:)
Top comments (3)
It can be used to generate simple code, sure — but can it also build a Transformer, Diffusion, or GAN model purely from mathematics and statistics, and train it on a Pentium Dual Core with 2 GB DDR2 RAM using a large-scale dataset? That’s the kind of challenge that separates real engineering from just wrapping tools.
True. But it doesn't mean anything to the rich people, especially those who have invested a good sum into AI, who also happen to have a say on headcounts.
Thanks
I love, it is free for now.
I will try it today.