Amazon Web Services has released Kiro, an AI-powered integrated development environment now available in free preview. Announced on 15 July ahead of next week’s AWS Summit in New York, the tool is designed to take software projects from concept to production by combining large-language-model assistance with project-level automation. Chief Executive Officer Andy Jassy said Kiro "could transform software development." Built on Code OSS, a fork of Microsoft’s VS Code, Kiro keeps existing extensions while adding agentic features Amazon calls Specs and Hooks. Specs embed requirements and design documents directly into the workspace, giving AI agents richer context, while Hooks trigger background tasks such as generating tests or documentation when developers save or modify files. The environment can also draft data-flow diagrams, TypeScript interfaces and API endpoints, and it supports the Model Context Protocol for connecting specialised tools. The launch positions AWS against Google’s Windsurf, Microsoft’s GitHub Copilot-based offerings and startups like Cursor in the fast-growing market for AI coding aids. Kiro will remain free during the preview period, after which AWS plans tiered pricing. By moving beyond ad-hoc code suggestions to structured, production-ready workflows, Amazon aims to capture a larger share of the developer productivity segment.