Amazon Launches Kiro AI Coding Tool
Kiro offers a range of features and pricing plans, including a free tier with 50 agentic interactions per month, a Pro tier at $19 per month with 1,000 interactions, and a Pro+ tier at $39 per month with 3,000 interactions, providing developers with flexibility and scalability to meet their needs.
Amazon Web Services has introduced Kiro, a new AI-powered coding tool that focuses on writing specifications over prompts, aiming to streamline development and improve code quality. Kiro is built on top of the open-source VS Code project and supports the Model Context Protocol, with Clause Sonnet 4 as the default large language model.
Kiro's key features include Kiro Specs, which allows developers to write out the requirements for their project, and Kiro Hooks, event-driven automation triggers that can execute specific tasks in the background. The platform operates in three phases: requirement unpacking, technical design generation, and task implementation, maintaining traceability between high-level requirements and implementation details.
Kiro is available for free during the preview period, with pro plans starting at $19 per month for up to 1,000 interactions. The platform supports most popular programming languages and is available for Linux, Mac, and Windows. Amazon's move comes as it and Google jump deeper into AI-powered coding, with Google planning to make its Gemini AI models more useful to software developers.
The platform's emphasis on structure and documentation may prove crucial as enterprises seek to adopt AI tools while maintaining the rigor required for production systems. Kiro integrates Sonnet 4 and 3.7 models as its primary AI engines, with plans to support additional models. The platform's two-tier architecture includes specifications that provide structured development guidance and hooks that automate quality assurance tasks.
As the demand for AI-powered coding tools continues to grow, Kiro is poised to play a significant role in shaping the future of software development. With its focus on specifications and structure, Kiro has the potential to improve code quality and streamline development, making it an attractive option for developers and enterprises alike.