No, you should not use Kiro to manage a major internet service. But for “vibe coding,” it really feels like Amazon is getting it right as the platform improves.
As far as ensuring that both the code the LLM produces and the user aren’t building something dangerous to themselves or others, Kiro does well in that regard (previous example excluded). And building it on top of VSCode is smart.
As I’ve already said, I’m not a coder, but I still do appreciate the extensibility of VSCode. The ecosystem is huge. And every coding agent is compatible through the chat interface, the terminal, or a standalone sidebar (Claude).
But you still need to know what you’re doing to get somewhere. Sure, Plan Mode is a great tool, but you still need to have somewhat of a clue about what you want.
Kiro’s spec-driven development, where each task is first split into requirements and design before even writing a line of code let you get there through iteration if necessary. Kiro’s pretty decent at giving you an MVP with the right prompts.
What’s been great is that since you’re generally working with Claude Sonnet, you can save your Anthropic sub for strategy and planning with Claude Desktop, then switch to Kiro for the coding.
And with the ability to switch down to the cheaper Chinese models for smaller coding tasks, you extend your token budget just a little bit more.
Kiro breaks down without structure or too little detail, however. What happened with AWS is not something surprising to anyone who uses Kiro. If it’s not “in-spec,” it won’t be built, and in some cases, it might remove unfinished work with whatever it’s working on at the moment.
Recently, I asked Kiro to build an affiliate plugin so I could migrate off Impact. It built an outstanding backend. One small problem: it lacked ANY of the WordPress plugin architecture.
The best way to address this is to be as specific as possible about the steps and to provide strict guidelines on what Kiro can touch during a spec. Haven’t had an issue since.
Amazon’s offer of 500 free credits to try Kiro is fairly substantial, and more than enough to put the platform through its paces.
If you’re well-versed in code, chances are Kiro isn’t going to be a net positive unless you are not organized in your development process. But for vibe coders, this feels like the right way to do it.