First Impressions: I got my Kiro beta key

Dr. Ryan Ries here. I got my beta key for Kiro, AWS’s new AI coding platform that’s currently in beta, and I’ve been deep in the trenches creating an app with it.

Today, I thought I would share my thoughts on Kiro with you—the good, the bad, and the ugly.

First Impressions

Kiro does something different in the AI coding space. It offers two distinct approaches: "vibe coding" for quick iterations and "spec-driven" development that walks you through requirements gathering, system design, and implementation planning. This structured approach addresses a real gap I've seen in other AI coding tools.

The spec-driven mode seriously impressed me. It asks thoughtful questions about your project, creates detailed requirements documents, builds architectural designs, and generates organized task lists. It's like having a methodical senior developer guide you through proper project planning.

What Kiro Gets Right

Let me show you my favorite things about Kiro's approach.

Instead of just throwing you into coding, the spec-driven mode conducts a structured interview about your project, asking detailed questions about functionality, user stories, and acceptance criteria. This creates comprehensive requirements documents that you can review and edit before moving forward.

Once you approve the requirements, Kiro moves into design mode. It maps out system architecture, identifies the APIs you'll need, determines what user inputs are required, and creates technical specifications. 

Then comes the implementation planning. Kiro creates detailed task lists that map directly back to your original requirements. Each task is specific, actionable, and tied to the business functionality you defined earlier.

This structured approach solved something that's always bothered me about other AI coding tools - they jump straight to code without understanding what you're actually trying to build.

Why Kiro is Still in Beta…

 I’m not sure when Kiro will be out of beta. There are definitely some areas that need major improvement with the tool despite all its promise.

For example, Kiro makes it easy to get stuck in a loop of "doom prompting.”

Doom prompting refers to those frustrating loops where the AI gets stuck repeating solutions that don't work. It’s a loop that eats time rather than saves it.

This circular logic issue did make me want to beat my head on my desk a couple of times… 

In my opinion, Kiro's biggest issue right now is what happens when the conversation gets too long. AI tools start summarizing the chat history to manage context, and that's when things fall apart completely.

I spent hours with Kiro building teardown and restart scripts to fix port conflicts and clean up processes. These scripts worked perfectly. But after the chat history got summarized, Kiro completely forgot they existed.

When the same error appeared again, instead of using our carefully crafted solutions, it went back to the broken approaches we'd already abandoned. I had to tell it, "Hey, we wrote these scripts," and it responded with, "You're right, let me search for them." Then, it couldn't find them anywhere.

Kiro's Sweet Spot

Here's what I discovered during my Kiro testing: as this tool exists right now, it’s incredibly powerful if you fall into its sweet spot. You need to know enough about programming to recognize when the AI is going in circles, but not so much that you could just solve the problem yourself.

If you know nothing about coding, you'll get trapped in infinite loops without realizing it. If you're an expert programmer, you'll want to chuck your computer out the door because you could fix the issue faster manually.

But if you're in that middle ground like me - enough technical knowledge to be dangerous but not enough to build complex systems from scratch - these tools can accelerate your work dramatically.

Kiro helped me:

• Set up Google OAuth authentication (something I'd never done)
• Configure complex React dependencies and libraries
• Build a complete frontend/backend architecture
• Handle file uploads and API integrations

Tasks that would have taken me weeks of research and trial-and-error were completed in hours.

My Final Thoughts

AI coding tools like Kiro have a ton of potential. Kiro in particular is different than other AI coding tools I’ve played around with on the market.

The frustrations are real, but I would say they're growing pains, not fundamental flaws. 

Kiro is particularly promising because it's thinking systematically about the development process, not just the coding. The spec-driven approach, agent steering capabilities, and structured project management show AWS understands that successful AI development tools need to be more than just smart autocomplete.

Yes, you'll occasionally want to throw your computer out the window. But more often, you'll be amazed at what you can build with the right combination of AI assistance and human guidance.
The future of business application development is being written right now, and tools like Kiro are showing us what's possible when we combine human creativity with AI capability.

Let me know if you’ve played around with Kiro yet, or if this has made you excited to give it a go.

Until next time, 
Ryan

Now, time for this week's AI-generated image and the prompt I used to create it.

Can you recreate this meme but using my photo instead of Leonardo DiCaprio? I've attached a photo of the meme and of myself. Note: this was created with Dalle.

This is the meme I wanted: 

Surprisingly, this is what Nano Banana created… so bad.