Kiro is AWS’s agentic IDE: spec-driven by default, with a CLI, web, mobile, and a multi-agent Crew, metered in credits from a 50-credit free tier to a $200/month Power plan.
Kiro is the only major IDE vendor that treats specs, requirements, and design documents as the primary artifact rather than chat, and that bet either matches how your team already works or will feel like bureaucracy.
What it is #
Two modes organize everything: vibe mode for direct iteration and spec mode, where Kiro generates requirements and design docs you edit before implementation proceeds. Agent hooks trigger on file changes or schedules, and a subscription covers the IDE, the CLI, Kiro on the web, mobile, Crew (parallel agents), and ACP-compatible IDEs, an unusually wide surface list. The default model router is Auto, mixing frontier and specialist models, with explicit choices spanning GPT-5.6, Claude Opus 5 and Sonnet 5, DeepSeek, MiniMax, GLM-5, and Qwen3 Coder Next.
Status #
Active and enterprise-ready. The vendor changelog shows weekly releases, with the CLI at 2.27.0 (October 1, 2026, control over how V3 delegates when Workflows are enabled, live file and folder context in Steering, and saved prompts exposed as slash commands) above the 2.26.0 release of September 30 (opt-in Workflows for reusable multi-step tasks in V3, Classic migration guidance, and stricter V3 approval safeguards) above the 2.25.0 release of September 28 (Powers management from chat or the command line, V3 output styles, fullscreen scroll tuning, and a SessionEnd Hook) and the 2.24.0 release of September 23 (session-wide tool approval in V3, combined session dashboard controls, and environment isolation that stops project .env files auto-loading, after the 2.23.0 and 2.23.1 pair of September 21 to 23 with reasoning controls in /model and V3 cloud sessions that start before connecting a repository, and the 2.22.0 to 2.22.1 line of September 16 to 17, which added fullscreen chat and a streamlined session dashboard) and the IDE at 1.2.4 since September 30, 2026 (IDE Workflows, safeguards for untrusted workspaces, and enterprise sign-in controls), up from the 1.1.70 release of September 24 (configurable terminal timeouts, clickable file links, and Agent Focus session restore, continuing the 1.1 line that began September 14 with durable agent artifacts and native ARM64 builds, up from the 1.0.437 line of September 1, the same day Kiro Web reached general availability and Kiro came under AWS ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certification), while Crew 0.7.0 landed September 24, 2026 with live settings, durable queued work that survives Gateway restarts, pull request watches beyond GitHub (GitLab, Bitbucket Cloud, and Azure DevOps), OpenCode and goose agent backends, and AWS Fargate remote crews, building on Crew 0.6.0’s September 5 session harness selection (Claude Code, Codex, or KAS); pricing, GovCloud availability, and enterprise billing through AWS are all shipped. The September 14 changelog also raised the GPT-5.6 family to a 1M context window, billed at double the short-context rate above 272K tokens. On September 16, 2026 the Claude Fable 5.1 Preview began rolling out to Kiro Enterprise clients: a 1M-context model billing at a 6x credit multiplier, with US-East-only inference and traffic retained up to 30 days for abuse detection. On September 28, 2026 Claude Opus 5.5 joined the model list across the IDE, CLI, Crew, and Web at a 2.0x credit multiplier, down from Opus 5’s 2.2x. The public issue tracker (kirodotdev/Kiro, about 4.3k stars as of 2026-10-03) saw only README docs and Dependabot dependency commits on August 26-27, 2026, with no feature commits since June 22, 2026, so release evidence still lives on kiro.dev, not the repository. Its spec workflow has been influential enough that community projects port it to other harnesses.
Strengths #
- Specs as first-class artifacts turn agent work into reviewable documents, the same pull-based review pattern this blog argues for elsewhere.
- One subscription spans IDE, CLI, web, mobile, Crew, and ACP-compatible editors.
- Free tier includes Claude Sonnet 4.5 and open-weight models, a genuine trial rather than a teaser.
- Enterprise identity, billing, and GovCloud come from AWS machinery that orgs already run.
Cautions #
- Credits are the trap: 1,000 credits on Pro sounds large until spec tasks, refinements, and agent hooks each meter fractions of a credit at model-specific multipliers, and add-ons cost $0.04 per credit.
- Terms explicitly forbid routing subscription usage through third-party automation harnesses, so your Kiro credits stay in Kiro surfaces.
- An August 2025 writeup documented arbitrary code execution via indirect prompt injection in the IDE.
- The client is closed; the GitHub repository is feedback and docs, not source.
Pricing #
Free: $0 with 50 credits, open-weight models plus Claude Sonnet 4.5. Pro $20 (1,000 credits), Pro+ $40 (2,000), Pro Max $100 (5,000), Power $200 (10,000), add-on credits at $0.04 each, enterprise via AWS with SSO and overage controls, GovCloud priced about 20% higher, as of 2026-09-24.
Price history #
| Date | Plan | Change | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-09-18 | All tiers | Baseline: Free $0 (50 credits), Pro $20 (1,000), Pro+ $40 (2,000), Pro Max $100 (5,000), Power $200 (10,000), add-on credits $0.04 each, GovCloud about 20% higher. |
Compared to #
- Cursor: chat-first versus spec-first; pick Kiro when requirements artifacts matter to your team.
- JetBrains IDEs: deep analysis versus spec workflow; both sell credits.
- VS Code + Copilot: the neutral host; Kiro is an opinionated environment with AWS gravity.
Bottom line #
Recommended for spec-disciplined teams, especially those already buying through AWS. Not for credit-averse solo engineers or anyone who wants an open client.
Changes #
- 2026-08-24 - Created in the owner-requested Surfaces expansion with credit tiers and the incident record.
- 2026-08-25 - Corrected the status attribution, moving release-cadence evidence to the vendor changelog and adding it as a reference.
- 2026-09-02 - Added Kiro Web general availability and the ISO 27001 certification.
- 2026-09-12 - Recorded Crew 0.6.0 session-harness selection alongside CLI patch updates.
- 2026-09-16 - Recorded IDE 1.1 (agent artifacts, native ARM64) and the GPT-5.6 1M-context upgrade, both September 14.
- 2026-09-18 - Recorded CLI 2.22.0 (fullscreen chat, streamlined session dashboard) and the Claude Fable 5.1 Enterprise Preview (1M context, 6x multiplier), both September 16.
- 2026-09-20 - Added the Price history section tracking price changes in a table, per the new owner rule.
- 2026-09-24 - Recorded CLI 2.23.1 (reasoning controls, V3 cloud sessions before repo connection) and IDE 1.1.70 (terminal timeouts, clickable file links, Focus session restore), September 21 through 24; prices unchanged.
- 2026-09-26 - Recorded CLI 2.24.0 (September 23, session-wide tool approval, dashboard controls, environment isolation) and Crew 0.7.0 (September 24, live settings, durable work, PR watches beyond GitHub, OpenCode and goose backends, Fargate remote crews) as the new latest releases.
- 2026-10-02 - Recorded CLI 2.26.0 (September 30, opt-in Workflows for reusable multi-step tasks in V3, Classic migration guidance, stricter V3 approval safeguards) as the new latest CLI release.
- 2026-10-02 - Recorded the releases the 2.26.0 pass missed: CLI 2.25.0 (September 28, Powers management, V3 output styles, SessionEnd Hook), IDE 1.2.4 (September 30, IDE Workflows, untrusted-workspace safeguards, enterprise sign-in controls) as the new latest IDE, and the Claude Opus 5.5 model addition (September 28, 2.0x multiplier); prices unchanged.
- 2026-10-03 - Recorded CLI 2.27.0 (October 1, control over how V3 delegates when Workflows are enabled, live file and folder context in Steering, saved prompts as slash commands) as the new latest CLI release; prices unchanged.
See also #
- Agentic Coding Tools Landscape - the surface layer this note belongs to
- Send Implementation, Not Issue - why generated specs plus implementation beats bare tickets
- OpenCode - the open harness alternative, also ACP-reachable
References #
https://kiro.dev/ - product surfaces, modes, hooks
https://github.com/kirodotdev/Kiro - issue tracker, only docs and dependency commits since June 22, 2026, about 4.3k stars as of 2026-09-26
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45044061 - the prompt-injection code execution writeup