About Krio

Kiro, an AI-powered integrated development environment (IDE) designed to assist developers throughout the entire software development lifecycle, from prototyping to production.

Core Purpose

Kiro aims to address common challenges in AI-assisted development, such as undocumented design decisions, unclear requirements, and difficulties in system design comprehension. It emphasizes "spec-driven development" to create maintainable applications with proper documentation and structure.

Key Features

1. Kiro Specs

• Artifacts that facilitate in-depth feature planning, refactoring, and system behavior understanding
• Stay synchronized with the evolving codebase to prevent documentation mismatches
• Support a three-step development process:
  • Generating requirements (including user stories with EARS notation) from simple prompts
  • Creating technical designs (data flow diagrams, interfaces, schemas) based on requirements
  • Generating and sequencing implementation tasks with linked requirements, including details like tests, accessibility, and responsiveness

2. Kiro Hooks

• Event-driven automations that act like an experienced developer
• Triggered by actions such as saving or creating files
• Examples include:
  • Updating test files when React components are saved
  • Refreshing documentation when API endpoints change
  • Scanning for credential leaks before commits
• Ensure team-wide consistency in quality, standards, and security

Additional Capabilities

• Support for Model Context Protocol (MCP) for connecting specialized tools
• Steering rules to guide AI behavior
• Agentic chat for ad-hoc coding tasks
• Built on Code OSS, maintaining compatibility with VS Code settings and plugins

Future Vision

Kiro aims to solve fundamental software development challenges, including ensuring design alignment, resolving requirement conflicts, reducing technical debt, improving code reviews, and preserving institutional knowledge.

Availability

• Free during preview with some limitations
• Supports Mac, Windows, and Linux
• Offers multiple login methods (including Google and GitHub)
• Provides a hands-on tutorial for building complete features
• Encourages community engagement through social platforms and a Discord server