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Kiro: A new agentic IDE

kiro.dev

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Re: Kiro: A new agentic IDE

#151

Post by steve_adams_86 »

I love the emphasis on specs here; this is something I do with Claude Code (maintain a set of specs in text as we work).

I always keep the readme and some basic architecture docs (using markdown/mermaid) updated as I go, and I often just work on those rather than on code with Claude, because I find the value it offers is less in code generation and more in helping me document the rubber ducking process into useful schematics and architecture.

What can Kiro offer that's meaningfully better than what I'm already doing? I can take my system anywhere Claude Code and my repos can go, using whatever editor I like. Does Kiro have some special sauce for making this approach work better? Maybe some DSL it uses for more succinct and actionable diagrams and plans?

As much as I like the idea, I find it so hard to abandon a process I've been working on for months, using tools I'm already productive with.

Also, will pricing essentially be bedrock pricing, or will there be a value-add margin tacked on?

Re: Kiro: A new agentic IDE

#152

Post by theturtletalks »

placardloop wrote: post #134
theturtletalks wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like Amazon started making this when Cursor was hot in the market, but now that CLI agents like Claude Code are taking over, Kiro will have an uphill battle. It’s also not free or unlimited (though throttled) like Cursor and Claude Code using max plan.

Which is kind of ironic since the Amazon Q Developer CLI (which is essentially Claude Code with a slightly different wrapper) was released long before Claude Code and seems to mostly be flying under the radar.

Claude Code really was at the right place at the right time. Cursor started putting new models under their MAX plan that charges per use and I started getting worse results with Cursor over time as they optimized costs. I started looking into Cline/RooCode when Cursor did this because I knew they were in the squeezing customers stage now. I used those for a while with Sonnet thru OpenRouter, but Anthropic had the genius plan of bundling Claude Code with their Max plan. That made a lot of users jump ship from Cursor and the difference is night and day for me. Yes I pay 5 times more than I did with cursor, but still less than using API credits and the results for me have been superior.

Re: Kiro: A new agentic IDE

#153

Post by sinatra »

NathanKP wrote: post #5

Hello folks! I've been working on Kiro for nearly a year now. Happy to chat about some of the things that make it unique in the IDE space. We've added a few powerful things that I think make it a bit different from other similar AI editors. In specific, I'm really proud of "spec driven development", which is based on the internal processes that software development teams at Amazon use to build very large technical pr…

Have you documented how you built this project using Kiro? Your learnings may help us get the best out of Kiro as we experiment with it for our medium+ size projects.

Re: Kiro: A new agentic IDE

#154

Post by ActorNightly »

NathanKP wrote: post #150
ActorNightly wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the reply. It was the indexing. Is there any way to control this? I have my files.watcherExclude setting, does it respect that?

I believe that the file indexing exclusion is based on .gitignore, not files.watcherExclude, but let me check on that and confirm.

I tried with a small project, it worked fine, no high CPU usage.

However with a large project, it seems that it indexed, then dropped CPU, then I started opening up files and working with them, then the CPU spiked again.

Re: Kiro: A new agentic IDE

#157

Post by Imustaskforhelp »

ActorNightly wrote: post #130
slacktivism123 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having ten "Electron Helper (Plugin)" eat a GB of RAM each on idle is the premier desktop experience nowadays. We can't have native apps any more: we don't know how to build them.

I use VSCode with Continue. It has a Code Helper Plugin, which peaks during use, but when idle it doesn't use any resource. Something is up with the Kiro version where some background task is running.

See the NathanKP comment on the (grand parent post?), It was the indexing which was causing the resource utiliazation.

Re: Kiro: A new agentic IDE

#158

Post by duderific »

johntarter wrote: post #141

Is there any way to move the chat window to the primary side bar? Having two side bars open takes up a lot of space. Not sure why this pattern persists in these VScode forks.

Generally in VSCode and its clones you can drag the window anywhere you like. I've been using my Copilot in the lower area which spans multiple panels, to give myself a little more viewing space.

Re: Kiro: A new agentic IDE

#159

Post by didibus »

theusus wrote: post #121
NathanKP wrote: post #5

Hello folks! I've been working on Kiro for nearly a year now. Happy to chat about some of the things that make it unique in the IDE space. We've added a few powerful things that I think make it a bit different from other similar AI editors. In specific, I'm really proud of "spec driven development", which is based on the internal processes that software development teams at Amazon use to build very large technical pr…

Why build an editor and not a CLI. VS code is really slow for me and I would have preferred a CLI.

They already have a CLI that is similar to Claude Code: Amazon Q CLI, you can download it here: https://github.com/aws/amazon-q-developer-cli

It actually has a pretty decent free tier, and maybe the subscription is better value than Claude Code, but hard to tell.

Re: Kiro: A new agentic IDE

#160

Post by dang »

factorialboy wrote: post #7

What's with the edited title "it's Cursor clone". Unless it's literally a Cursor clone, I'd request to change it to describe the product category. Cursor by no means defines the whole category. Not even close.

We've replaced the title. (Submitted title was "AWS launches Kiro, its Cursor clone")
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