Amazon Web Services has unveiled Kiro, a new AI-powered integrated development environment (IDE) that launched in preview on July 14, 2025. The Amazon team behind the project aims to bridge the gap between rapid AI-generated software prototypes and production-ready systems that require formal specs, comprehensive testing, and ongoing documentation. The idea is to go from "vibe coding to viable code," as the Kiro website puts it.
Kiro introduces a revolutionary spec-driven development methodology that transforms ideas into production-ready systems with unprecedented clarity and speed. Gone are the days of scattered requirements, unclear implementation paths, and endless back-and-forth between planning and coding. This approach addresses what has become known as "vibe coding" – the practice of using development tools to tell an AI assistant what to build using conversational English, then either working with it like a pair programmer or letting it do most of the work.
According to the documentation, the key differentiation for Kiro is the use of specifications (specs). Specs are defined in three markdown files: requirements.md, design.md, and tasks.md. The requirements file uses EARS (Easy Approach to Requirements Syntax) – a mechanism for constraining textual requirements developed at Rolls Royce. The design document describes the tech stack and architecture of the application, and the tasks list shows a series of steps needed to implement the design, right through to deployment.
Kiro's integration with AI agents to perform spec-driven coding tasks highlights the growing role of autonomous software in the enterprise. Kiro provides an agentic chat function for coding tasks within a file and agents can be connected to external open-source tools. The need for periodic human oversight still remains, although agents can operate now for longer periods.
This can be turned into Kiro tasks and sub-tasks that the agents can then send to coding agents. Each task includes details such as requirements, implementation, accessibility and testing needs. This allows developers to follow along and check the work in steps to avoid any missing pieces. "Kiro's specs stay synced with your evolving codebase. Developers can author code to update specs or update specs to refresh tasks," AWS Product Lead Nikhil Swaminathan and Vice President of DevEx and Agents Deepak Singh wrote in a blog post.
The important thing about this approach is that the code and the agent's process are completely documented top-to-bottom. Nothing is left out and the developer has a bird's eye view of how the app or function will be built and is able to guide it from the requirements view before anything happens. Amazon said this eliminates the costly back-and-forth usually associated with vibe coding.
In a post on X, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said Kiro "has a chance to transform how developers build software." The introduction comes days after Google said it is hiring staffers of AI coding software startup Windsurf as part of a $2.4 billion technology licensing deal. Google said it plans to make its Gemini AI models more useful to software developers. Amazon and Google are jumping deeper into so-called vibe coding, the process of directing computers to create software with minimal human direction.
Kiro is a standalone IDE and although it is an AWS product, it is presented as "slightly separated from the rest of core AWS," according to Nathan Peck, AWS developer advocate for AI. Kiro can be used without an AWS account, by logging into either Google or GitHub. The goal is for Kiro to have a "unique identity outside AWS" in order to appeal to developers using other platforms. Kiro has its own site and according to the About page is built and operated by a small, opinionated team within AWS. It is free during preview, following which there will be a free tier with 50 agentic interactions per month, Pro accounts for $19.00 per user/month with 1,000 interactions, and Pro+ accounts for $39.00 with 3,000 interactions.